Pan's Labyrinth - Cornelia Funke & Guillermo del Toro

   2019; 262 pages.  New Authors? : Yes and Yes.  Genres : Dark Fantasy; Historical Fiction (Spanish Civil War); YA; Fairy Tales.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    It should’ve been one of the happiest days in 13-year-old Ofelia’s life.  She and her mother are on their way to meet up with the man who will become Ofelia’s stepfather, Captain Ernesto Vidal.

 

    It’s a dangerous undertaking for her mother, Carmen Cardoso.  She’s both sick and pregnant, but the baby is Vidal’s, and is almost due.  Urgent times require urgent measures, and Carmen is overjoyed at the thought of marrying Vidal, whom she loves dearly.

 

    Ofelia is less enamored.  Captain Vidal cares only about the son that’s about to be born to him, and once that happens, Ofelia’s afraid she’ll become unwanted baggage.  Maybe some handsome prince will come along, sweep her off her feet, and carry her off to his magical castle.

 

    But that’s just a young girl’s fairy tale dream, isn’t it?  And Ofelia’s mother says fairy tales don’t have anything to do with the world.

 

    Ofelia knows better, though.  She 's a bookworm and those fairy tales she’s read in her books have taught her everything she knows about this world.

 

What’s To Like...

    Pan’s Labyrinth is an ambitious blending of the Historical Fiction and Dark Fantasy genres.  It is set in 1944 northern Spain, at the height of the bitter Spanish Civil War, with Captain Vidal commanding a small group of royalist troops holding an abandoned mill against an equally-sized band of rebels.  The Dark Fantasy aspect is …well… quite dark.  There are magical creatures, they have their own agenda, and while Ofelia is a key part of that, her well-being takes a backseat to the completion of their task.

 

    There are three storylines to follow.  1.) Carmen desperately wants to marry again; it is a dangerous time to be a lone adult female with child; 2.)  Captain Vidal desperately wants to uphold his late father’s legacy by wiping out the rebels; 3.) Ofelia enters Pan’s Labyrinth and agrees to complete three tasks, the usual number in every fantasy tale she's read.

 

    The book is divided into 49 chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue.  That works out to about 5 pages per chapter, so you never have to worry about finding a good place to stop.  There are some neat drawings along the way, and credit should be given to the gifted illustrator, Allen Williams.

 

    You’ll learn a smattering of Spanish vocabulary and one neat Latin phrase, which is given below.  I liked the way the “Book of Crossroads” that the Faun gives to Ofelia works.  There is some violence – people are killed and some torture - but hey, there’s a war going. The cussing a sparse;  I think I counted only ten instances in the entire book, two of them in Spanish.

 

    The ending is bittersweet, powerful, undeniably dark, and rather clever.  I found it surprising, despite it being what you could call a standard fairy tale ending.  All the plot threads are tied up.  I don’t see that a sequel is called for, although Wikipedia indicates that Guillermo del Toro contemplated one for a while but later abandoned the idea.

 

Excerpts...

    It was time to fulfill the task for which she’d been sent to the mill.  She fluttered toward the girl with her new wings and addressed her with vehemence.  Come along! She gestured, giving her signal all the urgency her master’s orders demanded.  He wasn’t the most patient one.

    “You want me to follow you?  Outside?  Where?”

    So many questions.  Humans asked them about everything, but they usually weren’t half as good at finding the answers.  (loc. 476)

 

    Maybe the Faun had heard about those books.  He usually didn’t come to Caraméz’s workshop.  The Faun didn’t believe in books.  He was much older than the oldest manuscripts in the queen’s library and could rightfully claim that he knew so much more about the world than all their yellowed pages.  But one day he suddenly stood in the door of the bookbinder’s workshop.  Caraméz was slightly afraid of the Faun.  He was never sure whether he could trust those pale blue eyes.  In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Fauns eat bookbinders.  (loc. 1784)

 

Kindle Details…

    Pan’s Labyrinth currently sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Cornelia Funke has a dozen or more other e-books available at Amazon; most or all of which appear to be children’s fantasy novels, and in the price range of $3.99 to $10.99.  Guillermo del Toro has seven other e-books at Amazon, all with co-authors.  I’m guessing that means for the most part, he wrote the screenplay and the co-authors “novelized” it.

 

Ratings:

    Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 458 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.30*/5, based on 7,095 ratings and 1,429 reviews.

 

“In consiliis nostris fatum nostrum est.”  ("In our choices lie our fate.")  (loc. 158 )

    I can only come up with one thing to quibble about, and it’s something the authors have no control over: the genres listed at Amazon for this book are totally bogus.  One of them reads “United States Colonial and Revolutionary Period Historical Fiction”.  I think someone forgot to edit their cut-&-paste step when developing the Amazon blurb.  Really guys, doesn’t anyone double-check these things?

 

    Pan’s Labyrinth originally came out as a movie in 2006, and I remember being blown away when I watched it, along with just about every critic who reviewed it. This book version came out in 2019, and I can’t think of any other case where a book adaptation was published more than ten years after the movie.  I don’t recall much of the details in the movie version, although I thought that the fantasy storyline played a bigger role in it.  I think I’ll check to see if Netflix carries it.

 

    Regardless, I highly recommend both the book and the movie.  Amazon lists it as a “Teen and Young Adult” book, and I’ll go along with that, adding that adults will enjoy it as well.  But it's probably too violent for sensitive juveniles.

 

    8 Stars.  I’m assuming that the listing of two authors means that Guillermo del Toro wrote the movie script and Cornelia Funke converted it into novel form.  The value of Ms. Funke’s effort cannot be overstated.  I’ve read a couple other “adapted from a movie script” books where it was done in a cursory manner, and frankly, reading those books was a real chore.