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Genre: Historical Fiction Main characters: Diego de la Vega / Zorro Time and place: Alta California and Spain, 1790 – 1840 Summary: The novel starts with a then young officer, Alejandro de la Vega, making his way through world. Soon, he meets a young woman and falls madly in love. He has a son, Diego, that, at age 10, is sent to a school in Barcelona. It is there where Diego becomes a fearless swordsman and a protector of justice. It is there where Diego loses his heart. It is there where Diego becomes the black clad Zorro. It is there where the legend begins. |
For some reason I was expecting this to be an enchanting book: swordfights, a masked hero, a fiery love story. I ended up being disappointed though. First of all because of the way the story is told: long narrative pieces, with very little dialogue. Also, the story is told by one of the characters, which means we didn’t have access to the other characters’ inner life. The result? With a few exceptions, all characters seemed very flat to me and I couldn’t bring myself to care about them.
Let’s take Zorro for example. Young Diego de la Vega is a good guy, preoccupied by justice, but also shy in the presence of girls. Add to that the fact that he is quite proud of his feats (understandably enough perhaps, who wouldn’t have been in his stead) and that is almost everything we know of him. He simply doesn’t manage to raise himself off the paper. The same goes for almost everyone else — perhaps with the exception of Isabel de Romeu, my favorite character, who manages to express herself through words because she never shies in telling exactly what she thinks, so we get to know her a bit better than the rest. I also liked Toypurnia, and regretted (as is the case with Isabel too) that she didn’t get to appear in some more pages and do some more things.
They always say that in a review one should write about the book that is not the book the reader would have wanted to see. True, but a bit hard for me in this particular case. In my younger days I used to be a fan of (almost) every Zorro movie that I got to see — I sort of expected the book to follow the same pattern: Zorro, placed in difficult situations, manages to make justice prevail while, at the same time, finding his perfect mate. The book is vastly different though. I did enjoy some of the parts of Diego’s history and the very fact that we got to see him becoming Zorro, how did it happen, what brought it to him, etc. But there were other parts that I have found quite forced though: his communicating to his “brother” via telepathy, his becoming a part of a secret society and some more. To me these seemed mostly implausible, instead of adding charm to the story, as I imagine the author had wanted.
As a bit of trivia, Diego is Gemini — hence his dual nature. I was amused by it since I am a Gemini too :P
Here is a quote describing a moment I think characterizes Diego/Zorro quite well:
The masked man mounted his steed. To thrill the children, he whistled, and his mount whirled and reared; then he pulled out his sword and flashed it, making it glint in the lantern light, and sang a verse that he himself had composed during the idle months in New Orleans: something about a valiant horseman who rides out on moonlit nights to defend justice, punish evildoers, and slash a Z with his sword. The song beguiled the children but increased Padre Mendoza fear that the man was out of his mind.
Yes he was that vain, to start singing a song about himself, all of the sudden. Were I in Padre Mendoza’s place (seeing a guy on the black horse all of the sudden starting to sing) I would fear for his sanity as well. :P
What I liked most: the way the author has imagined the well known characters: Diego is the son of an officer and an Indian “warrior queen”; Bernardo, instead of being Diego’s servant, is his Indian “milk brother”, not dumb but not speaking because of a childhood shock; the fat sergeant Garcia used to be a childhood friend of Diego’s and so on — thus adding a history and depth to the story.
What I liked least: the lack of a strong enough heroine — I was especially bothered by the fact that the one who becomes Diego’s wife has to be one of the flattest female characters I had ever encountered :| (I do realize that the author was going for “something different” with her version of the story, but still)
I was also a bit bothered about the Z marking. When Diego was in Spain there was a lot of uproar about a guy dressed in black, wearing a mask and calling himself Zorro, who helped some prisoners escape and left a Z mark on one wall. Now that Diego is back in California, a guy dressed in black, wearing a mask and calling himself Zorro, helps some prisoners escape and leaves behind a Z mark. Can there be any question at all about the identity of the man?? Could he have been any more obvious?
Recommend it to? Although I wasn’t particularly excited by this book, I do recommend it to all Zorro fans — who knows, perhaps some will see in it a lot more than I did.
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