To say I expected a lot from this book would be an understatement, and sadly they weren’t full met (although I think that might be a fault on my end). I grew up watching the movie-musical adaptation, and the touring theater cast was all I could talk about for months when they finally made a stop in my home country. I love this story with my whole heart, but the source material is leaps different from the musical by Webber.

This isn’t to say this book was bad though! I did enjoy myself while reading it. The language, although not the easiest to read, isn’t totally archaic and I’d even recommend it for people whose first language isn’t English. If anything the language, to me, was one of the best parts of this book. Gaston Leroux often droned on about music and gothic architecture; and while that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I thoroughly enjoyed his analogies. 

< Leroux also makes use of a lot of metaphors relating to the sea or bodies of water. One of my favorites lines in the book reads like this: “In the orchestra stalls, the drugget covering them looked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been suddenly rendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom, who, as everybody knows, is called Adamastor. MM. Moncharmin and Richard were the shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a calico sea.” Beautiful.>

What I found I couldn’t stand with this book were the characters. The simplest way I could describe Raoul in this book is a whiny, wimpy, cowardly white boy who did nothing but cry at every little inconvenience. I hated Raoul so much from start to finish, it actually amazing. 

Christine was just a hair better but barely. In all versions of this story, Christine is depicted as a foolish and naive girl of pure innocence—she is literally likened as an angel throughout the book. However, I didn’t get naive or innocent… I just got stupid. Maybe I’m just pessimistic and have little patience but Christine throughout the book really just read to me as an idiot. She somewhat redeems herself in the end but as the book as written in the perspective of an investigator from the future, you can’t really tell what she’s thinking and so her character fell a little flat to me.

Erik is my favorite character in the movie and in the musical, but in this book we don’t get much insight from him either which is a total shame. <The first couple chapters literally fly by without him actually being there. We live through it with just the knowledge of his presence which, I think, might be the point if the author wanted to establish him as something incorporeal only to shock the readers somewhere down the line to say he’s mortal. If it is, brilliant! If not well…> To me he’s a tad bit better than Raoul and Christine but he’s equally as whiny as Raoul. 

Surprisingly the most interesting character in this book is the Persian who doesn’t exist in the other adaptations (I could be wrong, don’t quote me on that). His story in the movie/musical was given to Madame Giry. I think this was a good call for the adaptation as it deepened her character in comparison to the book. <(Madame Giry in the book didn’t read very well to me. She was boring and seemed almost as stupid as Christine. I really liked that they made her character more formidable in the adaptations as it gave a better representation of women in comparison to the book.)>

Overall, the book wasn’t horrible. It felt a little lackluster in comparison to its adaptations but if you’re into gothic horror or simply want to read the source material for Phantom of the Opera the Musical then I say go for it! Just don’t expect it to be anything like the movie.

Tenía bastantes ganas de leer este libro ya que me propuse a principios de año leer unos cuantos clásicos.
La verdad es que la trama me ha parecido muy buena pero muchas veces se me ha hecho un poco pesado y lento. Aunque eso no quiere decir que la pluma del escritor es una pasada, para mi gusto le sobran páginas.

La verdad es que hay muy pocos personajes de la historia que me hayan gustado y no he llegado a simpatizar con casi ninguno: Raoul me ha parecido bastante pesado y siento un amor/odio hacia Christine que no sabría ni cómo explicar. También me hubiera gustado que hubieran pasado más cosas en la ópera ya que me ha parecido que ahí no están casi nunca (sólo al principio y al final).

Por los temas que trata, me parece que es un libro que todo el mundo debería leer (aunque no esperéis una historia de romance bonita, porque este libro es básicamente horror y tragedia).

I thought this book was pretty interesting! It was told in a cool way, with Leroux assuming the role of a historian or reporter. Some of Erik’s lines were truly spine-chilling, but the themes of nature vs. nurture and showing compassion to those whom most people would turn away from were definitely worthy of further thought. It’s a slow read at the start, but towards the middle the story starts to pick up.

You can feel the emotion pouring from every crevice of this book. Definitely different from the musical, but just as original, moving, and dramatic.

Whelp. That sure was a book.

My rating is mostly for the unintentional comedy of how ridiculous the book is. I know some parts are supposed to be funny but I think I was laughing at the wrong parts. I also just love the idea of some guy secretly living in an opera house and messing with people. Sadly though I was bored most of the time while reading this. I liked Raoul and Christine well enough (though they were both extremely naive), Erik was very different than I thought he would be (I didn’t know anything about his backstory and I had no idea he’d be so talkative and weird. I thought he’d be more brooding lol). I found it hard to imagine the descriptions of the opera house, especially when they went underground, though that’s likely a fault of the translation.

Speaking of the translation, I don’t know if my edition (paper mill press) is just a bad edition but there were quite a few typos and a lot of things were worded awkwardly, and I don’t think it was just the writing style, it seemed like a bad translation. Maybe I’ll have to do some research and see if there’s a better one.

I really wanted to like this but I think I might just not get along with classics that well. Every time I read a classic I feel like I would like it better if it had been written today. Same time period, story and characters, just a more modern writing style (and less misogyny, racism and ableism… although this story relies so heavily on the ableism I’m not sure how you’d write it without it…). I don’t mind the old language so much but I don’t like the overly dramatic repetitive dialogue that classics often have (this one had a lot of that). I don’t like how repetitive in general classics tend to be. Which is sad because I want to like classics. The stories themselves are sometimes interesting but then the writing and dialogue ruin it for me :/

That ending though… Erik really went to all that trouble… just to break down over a forehead kiss and decide to let Christine marry Raoul after all. THEN DIE. OVER SAID KISS. Dude..

Also, I can’t imagine a room of mirrors being that convincing that you’d have to have prior knowledge of what it is to know it’s not actually a forest. YOU’D SEE YOUR OWN REFLECTION. COME ON.

I think this is probably much better experienced via the actual musical rather than the book. I’ve never seen the musical but now I want to.

A captivating tale, The Phantom of the Opera centers on the young Swedish Christine Daaé. She is reared at the Paris Opera House with her famed musician father's dying vow of a guardian angel to watch over her. She finally learns how to sing wonderfully from the voice she starts hearing after spending some time at the opera. All is good until Raoul, Christine's childhood friend who attends the opera, arrives to see his opera-going parents and spots her as she starts singing effectively on stage. Erik, the deadly, malformed "ghost" of the opera theater, is the voice, but as his awful jealously builds, he becomes more aggressive until Christine vanishes without a trace. The ghost is madly in love and it is a terrible disaster.

Although it appears intriguing, comprehending it was quite difficult. Throughout the first half of the book, I thought the two major characters to be obnoxious and didn't give a damn about them. I was highly entertained by the book's second half, but the ending was awful.