Javier Castillo: The game of the soul

By Javier Castillo The game of the soul is the last of the books he has published to date, a book full of mystery, as the author has accustomed us.

But what can you expect in The Soul Game? Is it a good book to read? From which genre is it? What are the characters? If you don't know whether to give this book a chance or not, then we give you reasons to read it.

Who is Javier Castillo?

As you know, the author of The game of the soul is Javier Castillo. For him, this is his fifth book published with Suma de Letras, which was the publishing house that trusted him after the success he had in self-publishing his first novel, The Day Sanity Was Lost.

We cannot tell you too much about Javier Castillo. He was born in Mijas in 1987 and initially worked as a financial advisor. In his book time, he decided to write a novel and, although he sent it to several publishers, as they did not respond, he decided to self-publish it on an electronic platform. And that changed his life.

After posting The day that sanity was lost in 2014 on Amazon the comments and sales began to arrive and that made some publishers notice him. Finally, he chose Sum of Letters, with which he reissued the first novel and released its continuation, The day love was lost.

After those two successes, with millions of sales and even the adaptation that was announced in 2020 (it will be through Globomedia and DeAPlaneta) in a television series, another novel arrived, Everything that happened with Miranda Huff, which once again told us some things from the previous novels with other characters to finish connecting the dots with everyone.

The Snow Girl was her fourth novel, announced as a Netflix movie in 2021 (for now nothing more is known about her).

And, as the fifth novel, The game of the soul.

What is the synopsis of Javier Castillo's book

La Synopsis for The Game of the Soul It already encourages us to know a little more about history. The argument is original, but at the same time similar to what the author has accustomed us to. Judge for yourself.

"Do you want to play?

New York, 2011. A fifteen-year-old girl is found crucified in an outlying suburb. Watch Triggs, an investigative reporter for the ManhattanPress, unexpectedly receives a strange envelope. Inside it, the Polaroid of another teenager gagged and handcuffed, with a single annotation: «GINA PEBBLES, 2002».

Watch Triggs and Jim Schmoer, his former journalism professor, track down the girl in the picture as they investigate the crucifixion in New York. Thus, they will enter a religious institution where everything is secret and a unique enigma full of suspense in which they will have to decipher three questions with impossible answers: what happened to Gina? Who sent the polaroid? and, the most important; Are both stories connected?

How many pages does The Soul Game have?

The game of the soul It is not a book that costs much to read. Javier Castillo has a very simple and easy to understand language and way of expressing himself. Perhaps what can cost the reader the most is adapting to the twists and jumps in time that he has, as well as the many characters that he intersperses in the story. But once you get it (and this happens in the first chapters), the book is not easy to put down and you have to read and read until the end.

In total, there are about 396 pages (according to Amazon) in which a double story (past and "present") unravels.

What is The Soul Game about and what characters does it have

As in other novels by Javier Castillo, religion, faith, pain, love and deception are some of the sensations experienced by the characters, and you as the reader.

In this case, the story is governed by fanaticism, the fact of controlling the lives of others and how that can end the soul of others. Of course, and as a hallmark of Castillo, you will find chapters with jumps in time and protagonists. At first, difficult to cope with (in fact you end up making a mess) but then things change.

The main characters, Miren and Jim, they are two of the most important, if not the only ones. It is true that you will have many more characters, but the truth is that these are the ones that are really well constructed (the others you get to give them a meaning when the novel is finishing).

As for the plot, again we find a mystery that occurred in the past and a present in which, thanks to evidence and circumstances, help to clarify what happened. In fact, there comes a time when both stories are intertwined, not reaching the same point, but almost (for a difference of years).

Of course, of Javier Castillo's books, many say that it is the most predictable, perhaps because it is the fifth that uses the same system to present the story (count parts of the past and present to reach an outcome).

Is it a trilogy or a continuation of other books by Javier Castillo?

One of the most common doubts in Javier Castillo's books is whether it is a book that continues the plot of the previous ones or if it is a totally independent one.

In fact, There was a rumor on the Internet that The Game of the Soul was the second part of The Snow Girl, and it really isn't. In fact, the author himself explained it in an interview where, although he said that the characters that appear in the book are those of his previous novel, it is a totally different story.

This means:

• That you can read it without having met the characters in The Snow Girl and without following an order (something that does not happen with the author's previous books. It is true that they recommend having read the previous one, but there is no obligation to do so).
• It only consists of one book. It is not known for sure if the writer will take up these characters again and will cause more surprises and stories in other books, but to date it is known that it is a book that has a beginning and an end, without further ado.

Have you read anything by Javier Castillo? What did you think of The Soul Game?