The Prince of Mist was the first book that Zafon published. It is set in Europe
during the early 1940s. Max Sr., a watchmaker and inventor, comes home one day and announces
to his wife and three children that, first thing in the morning, they will be moving away from
the capitol to a beach house that will be safer than their current location. Nobody is happy
except Dad, but everybody tries to be nice about it. After they arrive at the beach house,
they are overrun by events from the past that are far more real than the possibility of air
raids and invasions.
At first, while I listened to the reader I was irritated by his slow, simplistic delivery.
I finally decided that the translation or the author left out big words, but in the next sentence
I heard "luminescence", which is a pretty big word, even for me, so it wasn’t being "dumbed-down."
There is a plethora of classical imagery: an evil clown; many different types of windows into
other worlds; water as vehicle for change; and lots of references to malfunctioning watches and
clocks to show time out of joint. The reader’s delivery was part of that imagery: a sweet, almost
innocent telling of a grim tale that turns into a horror story. Initially the story reminded me
of Coraline
by Neil Gaiman. By the end of the book, I could see I was wrong. It is much more like
Pan's Labyrinth,
which is a movie and totally horrific from the beginning to the end.
Three big points in the CD's favor are: 1) the use of music and other sound effects; 2) I
did not know the key to the mystery until I was told (although I'm not sure I was given enough
clues to actually guess); and 3) I never even suspected the ending. I don't expect all books
to have happy endings, but I don't expect them to be completely defeatist either. The theme I
picked up was "Evil exists. You can’t be vigilant every minute and you can’t stop fate. You can
fight it your whole life, but eventually it will overwhelm your efforts. When it does you must
move on with your life."
I shudder to think of it.