This book is an expanded retelling of Gaston Leroux's 1911 tale, The Phantom of the Opera. A child is born. His mother's only gift is a mask. Precocious and gifted, he will live friendless and alone. Taunted and abused, he will flee, only to find himself caged again-as a freak in a Gypsy carnival. A brilliant outcast, the world is his home. Filled with bitter rage, he will kill to escape, becoming a stonemason's apprentice in Rome, a dark magician at the treacherous Persian court, and finally, the genius behind the construction of the Paris Opera House and the labyrinthine world below. Lacking one thing only: A woman's love. Cloaked in secrets, his power complete, he will see the exquisite Christine and for the first time know what it means to love. Obsessed, he will bring her into his eerie subterranean world, driven to posses her heart and soul. - Publisher.