A game. This book is a game - and in spite of its title, it is a devilish game, urging the reader to play along, to fill in the holes with the workings of ones imagination. 
 "The Angel's Game" is a story without a finished ending or conclusion; it is impossibly doublesided with an infinite number of options and possibilities, and the entire story depends on which angle you choose to consider it from. 
 I am still left in the dark, wondering and speculating. I cannot think of an answer to the riddle Zafon has presented within the labyrinth of his letters. For three entire days I have been lost, wandering in the darkness of Barcelona's streets with a talented writer who lived in a world of shadows, cobwebs and spiders, trapped in a hell of his own making or in the complicated patterns within the growing tumor in his brain. 
 Was it all an illusion? A hallucination? Or was it something different, something much more sinister hiding behind a thin veil of smoke and dust? 
 "The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction." 
 In "The Angel's Game" Zafon writes about a writer. David Martin is a troubled main character, haunted by his own regrets and a tumor pressing on his brain. He is given an important task, and he isn't sure if he can fulfill it without losing his humanity. Every night he sits in his tower, fearing his isolation and longing for the world he has left behind; a voluntary prisoner, held captive by his own revenge. 
 David Martin is interesting because he is an unreliable narrator, always telling his version of the truth. As the novel explores more and more of his mind it becomes clear, that his version of the events doesn't match up with the reality. For example, what he describes as a non-violent confrontation with two rogues is contradicted by the mention of blood on his face. He is impossible to trust and yet he is constantly imploring the reader to trust him unconditionally. 
 "The Angel's Game" differs from "The Shadow of the Wind" in many ways. It is much more darker than Zafon's earlier novel, and where "The Shadow of the Wind" was a story of a young boy who fell in love with reading, "The Angel's Game" is a story of a young man who is corrupted by writing. 
 In reality, the stories works as a mirror. They both expose and investigate the very nature of storytelling; writing, reading and narrating. Both books are compelling, gothic and dramatic, but where "The Shadow of the Wind" is hopeful, "The Angel's Game" is devoid of hope. Zafon tells the tale of a man who is already lost. 
 "A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price." 
 A reoccurring theme in "The Angel's Game" is the idea that a book holds the soul of its writer. And because David has agreed to write in exchange for money, the novel implies that he has sold his soul. While David's benefactor is symbolized by angels cut out of marble, David has in fact made a pact with the devil. The Faustian theme echoes throughout the novel, along with the symbols of angels, devils and lost souls. 
 Zafon gently weaves a cobweb of intertextuality; "The Angel's Game" has the premise of Dickens' "Great Expectations", while offering a close look at the mechanisms of The Bible itself and Zafon is constantly playing with the Faustian undertone. I could so easily disappear in all the books within Zafon's book as he leads his main character through the cemetery of forgotten books. 
 "Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it."