Defeated By Zorro

Yes, sadly this has happened, I have been defeated by a book and after trying so, so hard to love it I have had to quit the novel, and it’s one that I actually really wanted to read and an author I have been meaning to read for quite some time.

Zorro by Isabel Allende is a new addition to my ‘must read’ pile as for work I am off to see the show in July and I thought that I would read the book before I saw it, a bit like with the cinema. I always find the book is better, though some films like ‘Atonement’ and ‘The Kite Runner’ come pretty close. So in advance I got a copy through Read It Swap It.

I have never read Isabel Allende before and have always picked up her had a read or the blurb and then put it back, never actually buying one. I thought that Zorro out of all the books ‘a swashbuckling yarn’ would be an adventure filled romp that could break me into Allende before maybe trying House of the Spirits which some people I know have raved about.

By page 80 I had kept putting the book down and not picking it up, this is part one of the tale of Zorro’s youth in California and deals with his parents, his father a Spanish aristocrat and his mother a warrior woman. This part did have a large battle and a love story, it all seemed very contrived and the battle scenes confusing rather than thrilling, you could also guess very swiftly where this was going. I decided to carry on as part two started on page 90 and was more about his schooling and would hopefully finally kick the story into some sort of stride. I was wrong.

By page 123 I was bored, unbothered and knew it was time to shut the book and move on. Nothing had really started some new characters had been drawn into the life of Diego de la Vega (the young Zorro) and were boring me to tears. Enough was enough. The sad thing was that I really wanted to enjoy the book, it just fell flat, for me, and some other people clearly have loved it.