Prince of Mist

By: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Location: ZAF
Genre: Mystical

Over summer I read a range of books, and sadly when I examine the list they are all kind of similar, Jodi Picoults Storyteller, Sarah's Key, Pomegranate Soup, Tomorrow there will be Apricots... they all have a cultural or historical base and all have woman as the protagonist.
Then I went to India and found Prince of Mist. Books are cheap in India, it is a constant fear , the excess luggage fine, I have a SonyE Reader, I can get these books electronically, but you know what, a book in the hand, that is cheap. is so irresistible, especially when you have never seen it in New Zealand. I bought 6 book home.
Prince of Mist was my favourite, not a genre I read often, it is youth fiction, it is mystical, it is very clever.  It is stunningly beautifully written.... The prose is perfect.

“Age makes you notice certain things. For example, I now know that a man’s life is broadly divided into three periods. During the first, it doesn’t even occur to us that one day we will grow old, we don’t think that time passes or that from the day we are born we’re all walking toward a common end. After the first years of youth comes the second period, in which a person becomes aware of the fragility of life and what begins like a simple niggling doubt rises inside you like a flood of uncertainties that will stay with you for the rest of your days. Finally, toward the end of life, the period of acceptance begins, and, consequently, of resignation, a time of waiting.”

“He lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years.”

“Now he knew that any memories he might cherish during the last years of his life would be only fictions from a biography he'd never lived.” 

Max is a stunning lad, his story and that of his sister and their new friend, of circuses, statues, mist and wind, of good men, bad men and a family struggling to survive in the war years- is a mystical gem. Please get to know Max, you will not regret it....