Zorro by Isabel Allende

I did not purchase this book until last year, and I began reading it sometime during late summer or early fall. I had trouble getting through it and did not pick it up again until this week. I finally finished the book yesterday.

I have heard so much about this book and how it is the ultimate biography about Zorro. I give it three out of five stars. There is much good about the book, but it suffers from an excessive amount of verbosity. Take this passage from page 246 as an example:

This woman had very little to give, and she was weary of having beggars stop in, but she did not want to leave them without shelter. Because Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary could not find a place in the inn, the child Jesus was born in a manger, she said. She believed that refusing a pilgrim was repaid with many centuries of suffering in purgatory.

The first sentence would have sufficed. It was not necessary to go on and on about why. The entire book is like this. The above passage particularly annoyed me as it was near the end of a humongous paragraph—more on this below.

The background information from the beginning of the book about Don Alejandro and Toypurnia is interesting, but it lasts for far too long. Diego's childhood is far too long. Diego's time in Spain is far too long. It was during Diego's time in Spain that the book lost my interest, and so I put it away for many months.

The first half of this book reminds me of the first half of the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The first half of Order of the Phoenix drags along at a snail's pace, and it is not until Harry and his friends finally arrive at Hogwarts that anything interesting happens. About half of the first half of the book could have been removed, and this is how I feel about the Allende book.

While the first half of Zorro is slow and tedious, the second half is pretty good. The last 100 or so pages is quite interesting, and personally, I would have preferred for the last part to have been longer than the first part of the book. I felt like there were things that should have been expanded upon near the end of the book that were barely mentioned. There would have been more time for those things if the beginning of the book had not been so long.

The main characteristic of this book that I did not like is the lack of paragraphs. A majority of the paragraphs run on for one and sometimes to nearly two pages. I am someone who will read small portions of a book at a time, and I like to be able to find easy stopping points. This is hard when every paragraph goes on forever. I have no idea if the lack of paragraphs is how Allende writes in Spanish, or if the lack of paragraphs was caused by the translation to English. Whichever it is, it is a serious flaw in this book.

Other Versions of Zorro

Another question that frequently comes up is when people wonder why most of the foreign Zorro movies are not covered on the Zorro: The Legend Through the Years site. I have never seen most of those movies. They are not readily available in the United States. Even when they come up for sale on the internet, it can be hard to find English language versions.

I have seen a few of them, but I did not like them enough to want to put a page together for any of them.

Even though it doesn't say so, the purpose of the Zorro: The Legend Through the Years site is to cover versions of Zorro that were released in the United States. Plain and simple, this is why the foreign films are missing. The Alain Delon film has been readily available in the United States, and this is why it is covered.

The Purpose of This Blog

I have created this blog for people who wish to reach me through my Zorro websites. I am not that involved with Zorro at this time, but I am happy to answer your questions. By doing it in this fashion, you should get a prompt response. Keep in mind that I am usually asked these questions the most often:

Q. Do you have the rights to Zorro?

A. No, that would be Zorro Productions, Inc. I am just a fan.


Q. Is the New World Zorro series available on DVD?

A. No, and Zorro Productions doesn't even know who owns the United States rights. Nobody does. My prediction is that the series will NEVER go to DVD. Sorry.


Q. Do you know how we can get the New World Zorro series released on DVD?

A. Find the rights owner, except nobody knows who that is. There is a listing for the series on TVShowsOnDVD.com, so you might want to vote for it. It's not likely to help since nobody knows who owns the series.


Q. Do you have the contact information for Duncan Regehr or other cast members of the New World Zorro?

A. No. Even if I did, I wouldn't give it to anybody who asked. However, I don't. Really, I don't! However, people still think I do. No!


If you want to ask a question (preferably not one of the above questions which have been asked dozens of times), then post a comment. The link is available at the end of this post.