A review by kirkw1972
Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth by Mark Cotta Vaz
4.0
This is the novelisation of the 2006 film by Guillermo del Toro and co-written for 2019 by Inkeart novelist Cornelia Funke. I've had a look around the internet for why we suddenly have a written adaption and can't really find anything beyond: because she wanted to. Odd but I did enjoy reading the story. I vaguely remember starting to watch the film, being a bit weirded out and giving up. Reading this makes me want to give the film another go.
It's beautifully described, very haunting in some places and very easy to devour all in one go. It's much darker than the children's stories we get now and probably more evocative of the fairy tales as they were originally written hundreds of years ago. I enjoyed being a little bit creeped out by some of the characters like the Pale Man and the violence of the Capitan.
I'm intrigued to see the final published work as the illustrations looked great on kindle netgalley PDF but I'd like to see if they will be coloured. If not I still imagine they will be fantastic in print as they looked amazing from what I could tell. I actually wish there were more of them. I think they enhanced the story a great deal.
Overall not sure why we have it but I'm glad we do.
It's beautifully described, very haunting in some places and very easy to devour all in one go. It's much darker than the children's stories we get now and probably more evocative of the fairy tales as they were originally written hundreds of years ago. I enjoyed being a little bit creeped out by some of the characters like the Pale Man and the violence of the Capitan.
I'm intrigued to see the final published work as the illustrations looked great on kindle netgalley PDF but I'd like to see if they will be coloured. If not I still imagine they will be fantastic in print as they looked amazing from what I could tell. I actually wish there were more of them. I think they enhanced the story a great deal.
Overall not sure why we have it but I'm glad we do.