Review: Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I like that, Zafon, after luring me deep into the grim entrails of Gothic Barcelona - from its macabre mansions with their secret tragedies of years long past, to its cavernous streets shrouded by heavy rain and misty lights, and deep down into its hellish sewers, until I came face to face with the Devil himself - I like how, Zafon, all along, had the vision to finally bring me home, out of the surreal, beyond his circus world with its freakish characters and its forbidden games against Nature, so that before I could realise what I had just learnt, about life, about death, gone was the suspense and there was only awe, acceptance and tears. 

A master storyteller.