Recuerdo cuando aún no había leído nada de Allende, me puse a indagar entre su bibliografía, y este fue uno de los primeros libros que me entró por el ojo. Muchas reseñas decían cosas como que era de corte juvenil o que no es de sus mejores libros... Me desanimé. Y empecé por otro: La isla bajo el mar. Fue una verdadera explosión, y Allende se convirtió automáticamente (a pesar de mi "alergia" por autores muy conocidos) en una de mis grandes favoritas.
Tiempo después, decidí dar, finalmente, una oportunidad a El zorro. Poco conocía de él, excepto que es una especie de superhéroe y la peli de Antonio Banderas (que, por cierto, no es el mismo zorro de esta historia).
Pues, una vez más, me he dado cuenta de lo relativas que son las diferentes opiniones que genera un mismo libro... No he encontrado en absoluto una novela mejorable o TAN juvenil (si tiene hasta violaciones)... sino un novelón, repleta de magia página tras pagina, viajes emocionantes y, sobre todo, muy bien documentada en el plano histórico y en sus diversas ubicaciones, culturas...
Las cinco partes se devoran, cada una es única, aunque las dos últimas son...
Para ser una novela sobre los orígenes del zorro y su formación, se emplea una prosa adulta, rica en detalles de cada contexto y, al mismo tiempo, cuenta con un desfile de personajes geniales, unos propios de las novelas de Johnston McCulley y otros, cosecha de la autora.
Para terminar, no entiendo que a esta mujer aún no se le haya dado el Nobel de Literatura. Todavía no he leído algo suyo que no esté increíblemente bien escrito.

This book started off poor and just stayed there. After being recommended to me by two people, I had expected a thrilling Zorro book. Instead I got a book that made Zorro seem like a whiny, lucky and often thoughtless character. My main issues with this book:
1) A first person narrator acting like a third person narrator. While reading there was only one person who could have possible known what was happening and be writing with that degree of accuracy. By choosing who she did, Allende called into question the whole narration. At the end if suggests the narrator learned about events from another person, when they weren't there, but there were some events that person and the narrator weren't apart of and yet it is described in detail. The narrator felt overlooked by Diego and suggests the one day will have vengeance. Why would we trust anything they say about his motives or actions (especially constantly saying he exaggerated)?
2) Zorro is someone who seeks justice. In this book, the only people he helps are those directly related to him. The Roma, the De Romeu family, Bernardo, his immediate family and those he associates with in the Justice society. It describes his guilt growing up and seeing how they burned Native campsites but he doesn't do anything. He seems to only seek justice for himself and those around him. That isn't the Zorro I know.
3) Bernardo and Diego are milk brother. But Bernardo is treated like a servant, and underling for the majority of the book and it seems that it takes until the end of the book for Diego to have that revelation. It didn't seem plausible to me.
4) The story dragged out, especially Diego's feelings for Juliana. Think these parts were overdone- and hint at the narrator of the story but they became very dull.

I have a very hard time thinking of positive things about the story and will probably not read Allende again. A first person narrator should not be able to tell the events they weren't around for, internal thoughts processes and suffering of other characters. If you like Zorro, read another book.

I love the legend of Zorro, and I really wanted to like this book, but just wasn’t hooked. So after 250 pages, I DNF-ed it unfortunately.

Este livro tem de tudo: romances, ação, drama. Um livro completo.
O desenvolvimento das personagens foi um dos melhores que já vi, nenhuma personagem é deixada para trás como se não existisse.
Posso dizer que passei a gostar do Zorro e apercebi-me que o Batman é a versão fuleira e sem educação do herói deste livro.
Sem dúvidas, dos meus livros favoritos.

I was looking for a clever retelling of this fictional American homegrown hero, something with an interesting feminine twist. What I got was indeed a retelling, but not as clever or interesting as I had hoped.

This is a "tale of origin" explaining how Zorro became the masked avenger. He is born Diego de la Vega, son of a Spanish hidalgo and a fierce Shoshone she-warrior. Apparently, the author took great pains to research this book. Kudos. Despite all the research, there seemed to be something a little off. It wasn't so much the facts that were suspect(although I'd like to check if the Shoshone values of "Okahue" were created to serve the plot), but the way the facts integrated--or failed to integrate--with the story. At one point Diego is bitten by a rattlesnake. "Diego remembered some of the facts he had learned about rattlesnakes..." The facts that follow may as well be numbered, taken from some text or scientific article. The fencing scenes are even worse. You might as well read from a manual. I listened to the audiobook, so here is my best paraphrase: "He held his arm 180 degrees in front, foil pointed forward, left arm raised 90 degrees over his head for balance." Yes, that makes for quite the thrilling fight scene. The gripes go on. Every other word is a cliche (the translator's fault?), there is hardly any dialogue, the prose is bland, the characters flat and impossible to sympathize with, as they have as much pep as are papier mache.

This is my first Allende book, and I hear she is renowned for her well-drawn female characters and ability to write emotional drama. I can't speak for her other books, but here I found Julianna a distressed damsel, and Isabelle just annoying. Nuria, the girls' chaperone, is religious, superstitious and narrowminded, which makes her the most interesting of all. As for the men...Bernardo the mute Shoshone is sympathetic, mainly because of some emotional manipulation on the writer's part by making him an orphan who refuses to talk due to his suffering. She tries to make Zorro a sort of "scarlet pimpernel" type who behaves flamboyantly while defending the downtrodden from behind his mask. As with all her descriptions, she never gets more specific than saying he "dressed well" and "behaved flamboyantly". No "show", all "tell". She also tends to spell things out in case the reader wasn't observant enough to figure out something themselves.

I'd like to end on a positive note. Scientific discussion of rattlesnake bites aside, I did enjoy Diego's and Bernardo's Spirit Quests with the Shoshone tribe. I thought the two boys' respective experiences finding their totem animals did more to establish character than any other anecdote in this book.

I greatly enjoyed this re-imagined version of a story popular when I was young. How dashing Zorro was on my TV screen! (And, later, on the big screen with Antonio Banderas as Zorro.) In this beautifully executed tale, Zorro remains dashing, but also flawed and complex and with a backstory that makes the "privileged nobleman turned secret hero" believable. I was glad I read this AFTER I had traveled to San Diego's old town because that southern California experience gave this Midwestern girl a visual sense of place that greatly enhanced the story. Now, if I can only take up fencing . . . .

Apr 25, 2024, 522pm ~~ The Zapata Reading Club started this book back in October 2023 and finished today! Review asap, but first it is my turn to pick the next title so I am going to go browse the ZRC pile on the desk.

Apr 26, 615pm ~~ A lot of strange things can affect the amount of reading a person is able to do when there are three days a week to read a book aloud over the phone. The reasons we needed six months to get from beginning to end of Zorro range from power outages to my audience being out of town to calls being cut off due to storms on one end of the line or the other.

But even though it took about the longest of any book we have read so far, we loved every minute of the story. Zorro was a childhood hero to both of us, thanks to the Disney version that aired on television back in the day. I have read the original story about Zorro and have added it to our reading list so that Someday Marco can hear that one too. We've both seen movies about Zorro, from the original silent with Douglas Fairbanks, to my favorite with Tyrone Power (sigh) to a modern version with Antonio Banderas (another sigh).

So we were familiar with the character and we could both appreciate the way Isabel Allende portrayed Diego de la Vega throughout the book. He felt right. Even more importantly, his back story felt right too. Every time we saw our hero learn something that later became a Zorro trademark, we both said 'oh, of course!' because every source made perfect sense. It was great fun to live with Zorro for these months, and I can only imagine how much fun the book would have been to write.

I never did guess the identity of the narrator. It is revealed in the epilogue, and I should have been able to figure it out before that, but I was too caught up in the excitement of the story itself to really think too much about the narrator, who jumped in with asides to the reader once in a while, and made us laugh any time that happened.

I had read this book years ago pre-GR, but I had so much more fun with it this time. I would love for everyone to read it if possible in the original Spanish the way we did. But whether in English or Spanish, the book will definitely entertain and maybe even inspire readers. There might be a time when each of us can fight for Justice. Maybe not with a sword like Zorro, but with words or deeds that will help fix the world, even if it might feel like just one tiny step. You know what they say about journeys of a thousand miles!

I started reading this in Paris. I've been a fan of Allende's other works, not this one. It seemed stilted, less intimate, rather book-reportish. A friend then told me she'd been at a Allende lecture and that Allende had been 'commissioned' to write this. .boy does it show.

Siempre me ha encantado El Zorro, así que la idea de Allende de contarnos su origen, me encanta.
La creación y evolución de los personajes es suave, ya que vamos leyendo y luego de pasar determinados hechos nos damos cuenta del desarrollo que se ha obrado. Es obvio que mi personaje favorito es Diego, pero Isabel le pisa los talones.
El tipo de narrador, testigo, hace que nos sintamos dentro de la historia y podamos ver las cosas desde adentro. Y también es interesante descubrir quién nos narra la historia.
A esto se suma el ambiente histórico, California y España, en su mayoría, desde 1790 hasta 1815. Resulta duro ver ciertas circunstancias históricas, que sabemos que fueron reales, pero aquí quedan entrelazadas con las luchas emprendidas por El Zorro, lo que dan un toque de esperanzador.
Esta creo que es una historia ideal para ir conociendo escena por escena, puede que no sea de lectura extremadamente rápida, pero sí merece enormemente la pena.

In the year of 1795, in the coastal town of Alta California, a boy is born. He is named Diego de la Vega, who later becomes a great hero under the legendary name of Zorro.

His father is of an aristocratic blood, a Spanish military man, who teaches Diego fencing. The mother is of Indian blood and a warrior, who teaches Diego her own tongue. His grandmother fills his head with myths and legends of her people, and teaches Diego to fight and hunt. The continuous mistreatment of Indians is edged into Diego’s memory, determining the course of his life. At the age of fifteen, Diego sails to Barcelona to further his education, and where he also masters fencing.

This story is vividly textured with period details for which this author is known, and for the richly layered characters. It is set during a time of setting missions in California conflicting with natives and contrasting with the turbulent time of Napoleonic wars in Europe. The character of Diego and what he stands for is noble. However, I found the writing tedious. There are a lot of single day events descriptions that are stagnant, not moving the story forward.

Biju piemirsusi, kāpēc reiz nopirku šo grāmatu, bet tad stāsts mani ievilka nostaļģijas vilcienā, un es atcerējos, cik ļoti man bērnībā patika seriāls. Pie reizes kārtējo reizi pārliecinājos par tik atšķirīgo mentalitāti latīņamerikāņu autoru grāmatās - vienu brīdi notikumi risinās Eiropā un viss liekas pazīstams un normāls, bet jau nākamajā stāsts pārsteidz ar indiāņu vai afrikāņu garu piesaukšanu, rituāliem un nelaužamo likteņa spēku.

Bija vēsturiski, aizraujoši, un, protams, vietām dramatiski, jo kas gan būtu Zorro stāsts bez neprātīgas un saprātu laupošas mīlestības?

I really enjoyed this tale of Diego de la Vega (aka Zorro). It starts out from the birth of Diego and follows the formative years of him and his "milk brother" Bernardo . The two young boys, born on the same day, have a very close, brotherly relationship, which serves them well as they take on adventures. The only thing that separates them is social class. Their personalities compliment each other as Diego is more of the risk taker, reckless and attention seeking, which is opposed to Bernardo who is calm, quiet and deep thinking. For those who have watched the Zorro adventure films, you will enjoy reading about the events that led Diego to become the masked, sword wielding and romantic hero we love. Hopefully, you will also become a fan of Isabel Allende's writing and check out a few more of her books. She is a wonderful story teller!