Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun
Written by Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke
Narrated by Thom Rivera
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
New York Times Bestseller!
Fans of dark fairy-tales like The Hazel Wood and The Cruel Prince will relish this atmospheric and absorbing book based on Guillermo del Toro’s critically acclaimed movie.
Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo del Toro and bestselling author Cornelia Funke have come together to transform del Toro’s hit movie Pan’s Labyrinth into an epic and dark fantasy novel for readers of all ages, with enchanting short stories that flesh out the folklore of this fascinating world.
This spellbinding tale takes readers to a sinister, magical, and war-torn world filled with richly drawn characters like trickster fauns, murderous soldiers, child-eating monsters, courageous rebels, and a long-lost princess hoping to be reunited with her family.
A brilliant collaboration between masterful storytellers that’s not to be missed.
“Perfectly unsettling and deeply felt, this reminded me of the best kind of fairytales wherein each chapter is a jewel that, when held up to the light, reframes how we see the world around us.” —Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen and Aru Shah and the End of Time
“A fearless and moving adaption of the film, and a gorgeously written, emotional, frightening parable about the courage of young women amid the brutality of war.” —Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Gone
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is an Academy Award®–winning film director as well as a screenwriter, producer, and New York Times bestselling novelist. He is best known for his foreign fantasy films, especially Pan’s Labyrinth, and American mainstream movies like The Shape of Water. Del Toro has published multiple bestselling adult novels with HarperCollins, including The Strain, which was adapted into a TV series by FX, and he is the creator of Trollhunters, Netflix’s most-watched children’s series.
More audiobooks from Guillermo Del Toro
Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shape of Water Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Pan's Labyrinth
248 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book takes the best Greek story and mixes with Spain
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5movie was very good, book is awesome! highly recomend this book
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Well read. The narrator did an excellent job and had an enjoyable Spanish accent. The story was true to the film, but the additional fairy tales enhanced the entire experience.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good read. The ending was unexpected. I didn’t know too much of the original so I could appreciate it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This story is heartbreaking and beautifully told. The stories are mythical yet applicable to the human experience of pain, suffering, love, forgiveness, and justice. The villains are truly despicable yet remind you of someone you know… and the love expressed for the ones suffering causes you to reflect on the compassion have for others. Harness that and grow your love.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No surprise this is a wonderful book. I learned the lullaby from this movie on the piano and was intrigued... so I watched the movie and really enjoyed it. This caused me to read the book and I found it fantastic. I know that's a wonky way to get through the process, but it worked for me. Totally worth the read here!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5wow, I loved this, I haven't seen the movie but this book is phenomenal
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from my library.Thoughts: I wasn't a huge fan of this and struggled to finish it. I listened to this on audiobook which was part of my issue; it was hard to tell when we were leaving the main story and jumping into a side fairy tale. It came off as very wandering and a bit hard to follow.The story jumps between the story of Ophelia, a sad young girl whose father has died and whose mother has decided to marry an evil commander, and other random fairy tales. Ophelia's mother is pregnant with the commander's child. Ophelia gets lured into performing some crazy tasks to prove to a fawn that she is a lost princess. In between these tasks we follow the day to day drudgery of Ophelia's existence and also hear fairy tale like stories of the history and past of the world (both imaginary and real).This was okay. I liked the concept. This was written after the Pan's Labyrinth movie was released and does a good job of filling in some of the background that was missing in the movie. I really enjoyed the fairy tale like feel to portions of the story. Unfortunately, I had a hard time following the story at times. We jump from Ophelia's story, to some tale from the past, to the rebel soldiers, to various people around Ophelia and it was a bit erratic. I think listening to this on audiobook contributed to my confusion because the transitions weren't very clear.The writing was okay. I didn't really enjoy the characters all that much, you just bounce around too much to engage with them. The story is dreary and dark and depressing. Description is lacking throughout, so it's hard to picture places and settings. This is one I probably could have skipped. My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay but not great. The story felt fractured and it was hard to follow as it jumped between Ophelia, past tales, and other characters. It was fairly depressing and just not that interesting. I would have preferred to be listening to something else. This is a book I was really looking forward to so I pushed through but it wasn't really my thing and I would recommend skipping it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A novelization... normally, I would shy away from a book like this, but somehow I didn't realize that's what it was until I had started reading it, and by then I was enjoying it so much, I didn't care! I love the film, and this book was very true to the plot of the movie, also adding backstory that wasn't in the movie, but adds to the richness of the story itself. This is the perfect kind of story for me: whimsical, fairy tale-like, but with just enough horror to remind you that it's not a children's story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53.5 out of 5, rounded up to 4
ARC provided by HarperCollins, via Edelweiss
Novelizations of movies can really be a hit or miss affair. The best ones take the events that happen within a film and expand upon them in ways only a novel can do - bringing readers into the thoughts of the characters within a film and showing those same events from a different angle or with extra bits that the film might not have had time to show. Unfortunately, most film novelizations don't do that - they to just be fairly strict prose conversions of the script. So, it's with that mindset that I approached this "novelization" of Guillermo del Toro's award-winning Pan's Labyrinth - I hesitate to call this book a novelization because Pan's Labyrinth came out thirteen years ago and most novelizations come out around the same time as the film they're novelizing. With that context, it might be best to consider this book a retelling of the story featuring in the film - a screen-to-page adaptation, if you will, by a talented author - Cornelia Funke. As is always the case with any adaptation, does the story still work when transferred to this new medium? In the case of Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun, the answer is yes and no.
Pan's Labyrinth is an R-rated film. Sure, it's a fairy tale, but it's a fairy tale aimed squarely at adults. It's filled with violence and horrific imagery and all manners of things one might not want children and young teens to be exposed to. So, naturally, you'd think any novelization/adaptation of Pan's Labyrinth would be aimed at adults. This doesn't appear to be the case with this book. Amazon classifies this book as a YA-novel, and that sounds about right. The prose is more simplistic than one might find in your normal, run of the mill Adult Fiction novel, but some of the words used in the book are more complex than you'd find in anything simpler than a YA-novel. So, in terms of writing, this is definitely a YA-novel. This opens up a question though - why write an adaptation of a film that was originally targeted towards adults and target it toward a younger demographic?
Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun walks this weird tight-rope between being true to the film and softening some of the edges. Nothing in the film is outright censored, but some of the more adult elements aren't really elaborated upon. There is violence in this book, and sometimes it's pretty brutal violence, but it's rarely given the kind of description that would match the horror that came with seeing it on the screen. To me, that feels a bit like a cop-out. I don't like it when stories have their rougher edges sanded down and it makes me want to wonder what the point in adapting this story is if you're gonna have to tweak elements of it to fit a new audience. To be fair to this book, though, not that much is changed in the vast scheme of things. The novel follows the film's plot pretty closely; certain elements are toned down a bit but nothing is really wholly missing. And, the horrific imagery and violence aren't really important to the story, per se, but it does feel just a bit ingenuous to tone them down, especially as the story does involve a literal civil war. Then again, that scene featuring the amputation of a rebel's leg is still in this book, so maybe things weren't really all that toned down. It's just a bit of a discordant mashup of tones for me. It's not book-killing or anything, but it's certainly one of the biggest things I noticed.
While I might question the point in this book existing given my previously mentioned points, it's not that the book is remotely bad. It's very well-written and well-paced and does nearly everything you'd want a novelization/adaptation of a film to do. Readers are taken into the heads of a number of different characters. Certain scenes are expanded upon or told from a new point of view. Funke utilizes the strengths of a prose novel to tell certain parts of the story in a way that a film couldn't really do. And, best of all, there are some interludes scattered throughout that expand upon the Underground Kingdom and elaborate upon how a number of the characters in the "real-world" storyline tie into the events of the "Underground Kingdom" storyline. Those interludes were probably my favorite part as, by nature, they could really feel like a surreal fairy tale and offered something genuinely new to this story that I'm very familiar with.
At the end of the day, Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun is an enjoyable read. As you read it, you may get confused at just who the book is for - is it for fans of the book? Is it for new readers? If so, is it for teenage readers? Adult readers? Does it even matter? Honestly, probably not. As is, it's nothing particularly special, but it's well-made. It expands upon the film in a number of ways - chiefly in those interludes that feature totally new material not seen in the film. Readers are taken into the minds of various characters, although the insight provided is never really as much as one would like - these insights pale in comparison to another novel adaptation of one of del Toro's films, The Shape of Water (written by Daniel Kraus) - though, I still enjoyed these insights quite a bit. I enjoyed this novel a fair amount; it's a quick read and it's fun to revisit this story from a new point of view. I wouldn't call it essential reading, but if you were ever curious about the film but found yourself frightened by some of the more severe imagery, this is a good way to experience the story. I'd still probably recommend watching the film a bit more than I'd recommend reading this book, but this is a pretty solid adaptation of it. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Such a wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful, brilliant book. The pages are done so well and the artwork on the flash-back or side-segments or whatever you wish to call them is wonderful. The story is a wonderfully sad fairy tale.
There is so much to this story to unpack and so many little details to go into. The story is done very well and the interesting interplays add a whole kind of mythos to this. This is in the YA section, and it will be a fine read for young adults (though some things might be a 'bit scary', but if read by a 12 year old or higher it should be fine), but this reads just as perfectly well to adults. In fact, we (adults) will most likely get more out of it, but I think its a wonderful read for Middle School or High School readers and I think the story will be wonderful for them in that its a great introduction to fantasy, fairy tales, adult themes, and good story-telling. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every bit as dark and magical as the movie.A few lines that stuck with me:"Sometimes the objects we hold dear give away who were are even more than the people we love." (Vidal)"So many questions. Humans asked them about everything, but they usually weren't half as good at finding the answers." (The Fairy)"That's what the books said, and didn't their tales feel so much truer than what adults pretended this world to be about? Only books talked about all the things adults didn't want you to ask about--Life. Death. Good and Evil. And what else truly mattered in life." (Ofelia)"It is often easier to find something out than to face what you've found." (Ofelia)