The Angel's Game Review

There are few things that feel more like slowly dying than forcing yourself through over four hundred pages of an awful book. For me, this death of joy was caused by 'The Angel's Game' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which perpetrated the violent boredom-induced headaches and weighted eyelids which signal you are slowly descending into hell.

Older generations love to berate Millenials for struggling through the classics which have a slow pace and flowery prose, but at least when we make the effort to read those there is something to be gained. The same cannot be said for this book. In fact, perhaps slow-paced isn't even the right word for it as there were very few events to actually give it pace. It was one of those books where you make it two hundred pages in before realising nothing has actually happened. Most of the book can be defined by three key elements: sitting at a typewriter doing nothing; meetings where nothing was discussed; and crying over a childhood crush that nothing was to come of.

Throughout the book, even until the very end, I had this nagging awareness that I could throw the book away at any point and not care what happened to the flat characters and how the mystery resolved itself. Hope alone spurred me on, through all 450 pages of what should have been sold exclusively for fire kindling, the kind of hope that can be lavished on only one thing: a sequel. And not just any sequel, but the sequel to one of my favourite books of all time, 'The Shadow of the Wind'. I kept waiting for mystery and intrigue and characters that could well have been sitting next to you on the sofa had you the strength to put the book down. Unfortunately, all I got was a forty year old man, alone and still hung up on the unrequited love of his childhood, who was hardly even trying to solve the mystery which was the foundation of the book.

But there was one thing that truly made me want to knock myself (or the author) out with the three tonne hardback which had been crippling my spine for the past month from the confines of my backpack. It was the fact that the mystery was never resolved. Upon finishing the book all I had gained was more questions. Prior to finishing, all I felt was boredom and mild irritation, but post-reading, my mind had found a new feeling in which to reside: rage. Yes, we read mysteries for the thrill of the chase, but equally we want that chase to be resolved. The denouement is the best part of the entire book, but Zafon decided that apparently we didn't deserve such a pleasure for making the mistake of picking up this awful excuse for a book.

'The Angel's Game' does not deserve a word pertaining to holiness in its title, and it does not deserve to call itself a sequel to 'The Shadow of the Wind.' Disappointing and bland, it found a new home in my local charity shop where I hope it resides forever so that no-one else has to endure such pain.

The Question Isn't Why Do I Believe in Aliens, It's Why Don't You.

To the delight of space nerds and alien conspiracy theorists everywhere, Nasa recently discovered that there is water on Mars. Whilst some took this to mean that Mars could some day be habitable to humans, it seemed the thoughts of most went immediately to the possibility of alien life.

There is a very stereotypical view of what aliens should look like: brightly coloured skin, huge pupil-less eyes, sucker pad fingertips. And of course if they ever did arrive, they would speak perfect English whilst clutching onto futuristic laser guns. Whoever came up with the original concept of what aliens would look like didn't exactly use their imagination to it's full ability. What are the odds of aliens having two arms, legs, and eyes? Then there is the other end of the spectrum, the people who believe in the concept of extra-terrestrial life but insist that they'd only be bacteria or microbial. Perhaps such an explanation is more scientifically sound, but why dream of bacteria when you could imagine lilac slime, a hundred polka dot tusks, or an iridescent floating eye the size and shape of a pineapple?

All this talk about aliens got me thinking about how different places would react to the arrival of extra-terrestrial intelligent life. The human race seems to find it hard enough accepting different skin colours, and we managed to oppress an entire half of the population for thousands of years, so who knows what could happen if we encountered something as 'other' as aliens.

Presumably, America would take control and try to establish contact. There would be invitations to the White House to meet the President and the UN, although of course the entire US army would be on hand in case anything went wrong. Russia would probably try and use nuclear weapons. There would be a reality tv show, a book, and a world tour. China would immediately begin manufacturing innovative alien merchandise and set up group tours of the landed spacecraft. David Cameron would probably use the chaos as an opportunity to sneakily cut benefits and healthcare in the hopes no-one would notice. I wouldn't be surprised if the internet exploded from the sheer amount of articles, memes, and fanfiction that would inevitably be unleashed. Every post on the aliens' Facebook page would be filled with an onslaught of desperate requests for them to 'Come to Brazil!!', and they would receive both adoring compliments and death threats on Twitter. Someone would create the 'Alien challenge' to cover our social media feeds and there would be Kickstarter campaign to provide homes for the aliens. And all the while, Putin would be planning, and waiting. And on the final night of the Alien world tour, he would tell Obama an hour before of his plan and proceed to blow up the entire stadium. Our short fascination with alien life would be over and we would mourn the tragedy, but we would survive, and we would know that we were not alone.

Whether aliens would ever come to Earth or not, and whether they're bacteria or intelligent beings, the universe is infinite and it would take a certain kind of egoism to believe Earth is the only planet where there is life. The real question isn't: 'Why do I believe in aliens?', it's: 'Why don't you?'.

Who are the Police Really Protecting?

Believing the police are protecting everyone is something we are taught from a young age, as the numbers 999 are being embedded in our mind. The reason they carry batons and tasers is for sole use on criminals, right? A few years ago, if anyone had told me that some people with the same profession as good old PC Plum were all too ready to kill someone after something as simple as changing a lane without signalling, I would have been more than sceptical.

Now, however, social media means we can no longer hide from the truth about police brutality, and the police can no longer hide their actions from us. In the UK, there have been enough incidents to worry certain members of society, but when we think of our local officers, it is usually the image of them handcuffing some alcohol soaked idiot that comes to mind, rather than the terrifying concept of police brutality. In the US, however, racially motivated attacks by the public’s supposed protectors seem to happen as regularly as when the light of day bleeds into darkness. Black boys murdered for jaywalking, Muslims attacked for having the audacity not to shave their beard, the supposedly-fake suicide of a woman arrested with little reasoning: this grotesque parody of protection is not something I am willing to support. Without the internet, I would be sheltered by trust and naivety, but now anyone with a smartphone can help make the voices of the marginalised heard.

It is horrifying that there are hundreds of videos of black people being attacked by those in positions of power, whether an innocent teenage girl at a pool party being thrown to the ground or tear gas unleashed on protesters, but these short clips are forcing people to acknowledge that the justice system is ignoring its main aim, which should be blatantly obvious since it's in the title: justice.  Instead of protected, racial minorities (particularly black people, and increasingly Muslims as well) are being abused by the perpetrators of systematic oppression.

So who are the police really protecting? Whilst most of them are just trying to do the best they can and make a real difference, it is difficult to remain completely fair in countries built upon centuries of racism and white colonialism. There are certain police officers out there whose sense of justice is rooted in a 1960s ideology of supporting ‘their own kind’. While black officers had to provide the racist murderer, Dylan Roof, with a bulletproof vest, there are white officers literally killing black youths. The US and Europe have become an extremely diverse set of states but this amalgamation of races needs to be accompanied by a justice system that serves everyone. We are all human, and therefore we all deserve to treated with humanity.