Rating: 
Summary: drek...
Review: Reading this is a bit like biting into a gigantic cream-puff. One that somehow manages to be both undeniably stale and unreliably sweet. There it sits uneasily. You paid for it. Now you've got to eat it. Or do you? 500 plus pages of derivative drek. With all the luminous reviews one can only conclude that people no longer know what they are reading or why they are bothering. And those comparisons...oh my Lord.
Rating: 
Summary: Savor every moment of it...
Review: Ruiz Zafón has created a near-perfect novel: seductive and intriguing characters, a brilliant Spanish locale, and a lyrical style reminiscent of past literary masters. I found myself reading passages countless times just to savor the words. The language was so solid and mesmerizing, I could not believe it was a translation. The story lingers in your mind hours and days after reading it, and I become nostalgic; wishing I could read it again for the first time. When Daniel Sempere first enters the labrythine "Cemetary of Forgotten Books", he does not know that this single episode will change his life forever. Daniel discovers a novel entitled "Shadow of the Wind" and makes it his mission to find other books by its enigmatic author, Julian Carax. When he learns that Carax's novels have been systematically destroyed by an elusive stranger, Daniel must protect his volume from the flames. The more Daniel learns about Carax, the more he realizes the similarities and parallels between his own life and that of the author. Allot a good amount of time for this book, you will not be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Savor every moment of it...
Review: Ruiz Zafón has created a near-perfect novel: seductive and intriguing characters, a brilliant Spanish locale, and a lyrical style reminiscent of past literary masters. I found myself reading passages countless times just to savor the words. The language was so solid and mesmerizing, I could not believe it was a translation. The story lingers in your mind hours and days after reading it, and I become nostalgic; wishing I could read it again for the first time. When Daniel Sempere first enters the labrythine "Cemetary of Forgotten Books", he does not know that this single episode will change his life forever. Daniel discovers a novel entitled "Shadow of the Wind" and makes it his mission to find other books by its enigmatic author, Julian Carax. When he learns that Carax's novels have been systematically destroyed by an elusive stranger, Daniel must protect his volume from the flames. The more Daniel learns about Carax, the more he realizes the similarities and parallels between his own life and that of the author. Allot a good amount of time for this book, you will not be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite novel of the year so far.
Review: Shadow is a magnificent blend of saga, mystery, romance, historical thriller and drama, all wrapped around the fascinating enigma of a book that is able to change the life of all of those who read it. So far is the best thing I've read this year, stunningly well-written, witty, tender, scary, thrilling and very clever. It reminds you of the magic prose of Garcia Marquez, the intellectual games of Eco or the byzantine labyrinths of Borges, as the critics have said, but it is much more than that. I can't remember how long it's been since a novel gave me such much pleasure, such pure unadulterated reading fun. Any lover of good novels, of the great victorian sagas or those addicted to mystery and intrigue will find this a revelation, as I did. This is such an oustanding novel, so well-crafted and dazzlingly written that defies clasification. A new genre or label should be invented to describe it. In the meantime I'll just label it a masterpiece and encourage you to discover it and have the time of your life.
Rating:
Summary: A seduction of vision
Review: Slipping into this wondrous novel is like slipping into a warm bath for your mind and soul. This is the art of literature at its best, and an entertainment that is exhilerating, honest, fun. You'll feel great reading and for having read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: How You See It Depends on What You Bring to It
Review: That it's so tempting to read SHADOW OF THE WIND is a tribute to clever marketing. Comparisons to Marquez, Borges, and Dickens mix with gushing tributes from Stephen King and references to best-sellerdom in Spain. The literary come-on is hard to resist.
In the end however, the way you respond to this book will depend on what expectations you bring to it. If you anticipate a reading experience worthy of those heady literary comparisons, you'll be sorely disappointed - Zafon is little closer to Garcia Marquez than Stephen King is. The closest he comes is having the temerity to give a minor character, a boyfriend of Beatriz Aguilar's, the family name Buendia, the prolific clan from ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. If you plan, however, on a fantastical romp through a mid-century Barcelona converted wholesale into a gothic swamp of ghosts, shadows, haunted houses, malevolent, revenge-seeking, jilted lovers, swooning virginal maidens, improbably picaresque characters, unbelievable coincidences, parallelisms, and twists of fate, and a host of pseudo-Freudian relationships, you'll love every minute.
The story line of SHADOW OF THE WIND is so complex and convoluted, it's nearly impossible to relate in less space than the book's own 487 pages. Suffice to say, the premise is drawn from the search of a teenaged boy named Daniel for the truth about the fate of Julian Carax, the author of a mystery story (also named "Shadow of the Wind") that Daniel has adopted and read after his bibliophilic father takes him on a "coming of age" excursion to the aptly metaphorical Cemetary of Forgotten Books. Carax has apparently written a number of other books, all of them commercial failures, yet someone has been traveling Europe to find and burn every extant copy of Carax's works.
With twists and turns that would make the Minotaur's head spin in his Labyrinth, Zafon spins multiple parallel tales of Platonic love, blind love (both literal and figurative), failed love, enduring love, filial love, forbidden love, and unrequited love. Through it all looms the mystery of Julian Carax. Is he alive or dead? Who is burning his books, and why? Who is the char-faced phantom? Why does the evil Fumero seek such hate-filled revenge? Will young Daniel ever find his true love?
Zafon's book could be easily parodied or brushed aside as little more than a Barbara Cartland romance, but his writing is better than that despite being too often over the top. From the opening page where Daniel describes his mother's death as "a deafening silence I had not learned to stifle with words," Zafon mixes searing images and thoughtful observations with engagingly quirky characters such as Fermin Romero de Torres who capture the reader's imagination and heart like 20th century Sanzo Panzas and Dulcineas to Daniel's idealistically questing Quixote.
Unfortunately, these pluses are offset by unrelenting and heavy-handed atmospherics in which every page is marked by clouds, shadows, mists, flickering candles, twilights, smoke, rubble, ruins, twisted heaps, blood, and "glutinous darkness," and the like. Florid prose abounds: "The white marble was scored with black tears of dampness that looked like blood dripping out of the clefts left by the engraver's chisel. They lay side by side, like chained maledictions." Readers must also contend with two laughably miraculous conceptions, both occurring after first night trysts (a tribute perhaps to the ineffable virility of Spanish males?), and an unfortunately anachronistic request by a Barcelona doctor in 1954 for a "brain scan" of an injured Fermin (page 288).
Net net, SHADOW OF THE WINDS is entertaining escapism with modest literary pretensions. Enjoy it for what it is, but don't expect it to be more than it is.
Rating:
Summary: The Critic's Rave Reviews are all Correct
Review: The enthusiastic praise and adulation which critics have accorded the english publication of Carlo Ruiz Zafon's first novel, "The Shadow of the Wind", may trouble the reader who begins the book, worried that little might match his expectations. After all, reviewers who compare a writer's work to a combination of Umberto Eco, or Jorge Luis Borges, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or other literary giants, compel the reader to expect to be transported when they open the book. Not to worry. Once started, the single downside for the reader will be knowing that the experience must end. The plot is quite complex, the jacket cover's synopsis will give the reader all he needs to know. The important thing is to read it slowly and carefully. A mystery story, a fairy tale, a love story (actually several love stories), a passion for literature, a treatise on politics, a bawdy tale, with love, hate, courage, intrigue, loss of innocence, humor, cowardice, villainy, cruelty, compassion, regret, murder, incest, redemption, and more. Add to this delicious mixture characters who come alive, and whose thoughts and feelings you will feel deeply. What a great pleasure to discover; an extraordinary first work, one which towers over the endless and repetative volumes which inhabit today's "Best Seller" lists. Read it, and become hypnotized. Edward Jawer
Wyncote, Pa.
ejawer@comcast.net
Rating:
Summary: The Critic's Rave Reviews are all Correct
Review: The enthusiastic praise and adulation which critics have accorded the english publication of Carlo Ruiz Zafon's first novel, "The Shadow of the Wind", may trouble the reader who begins the book, worried that little might match his expectations. After all, reviewers who compare a writer's work to a combination of Umberto Eco, or Jorge Luis Borges, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or other literary giants, compel the reader to expect to be transported when they open the book. Not to worry. Once started, the single downside for the reader will be knowing that the experience must end. The plot is quite complex, the jacket cover's synopsis will give the reader all he needs to know. The important thing is to read it slowly and carefully. A mystery story, a fairy tale, a love story (actually several love stories), a passion for literature, a treatise on politics, a bawdy tale, with love, hate, courage, intrigue, loss of innocence, humor, cowardice, villainy, cruelty, compassion, regret, murder, incest, redemption, and more. Add to this delicious mixture characters who come alive, and whose thoughts and feelings you will feel deeply. What a great pleasure to discover; an extraordinary first work, one which towers over the endless and repetative volumes which inhabit today's "Best Seller" lists. Read it, and become hypnotized. Edward Jawer
Wyncote, Pa.
ejawer@comcast.net
Rating:
Summary: by far one of the best, if not THE best book I ever read
Review: The plot is dense, the characters are very well developed, and the book is gripping from the very first page, such that you wont put it down until you have read the last sentence on the very last page. you cant get enough of the story, you keep on reading until your eyes are dry and hurt, but you wont put the book down. this is one of the books that I will likely read a second and maybe a third time. honestly, I think this is the best book I have ever read, certainly one of the best five books. the sad thing is, once you finish it, you are certain that the next book you will read will not be as good, and the one after neither. It is a jewel. I would give it ten stars, if there were. go buy it, take two days of, surround you with you favorite food and dive into that wonderful story which is set in post franco aera barcelona. certainly a book lover's story!
Rating:
Summary: A truly brilliant debut
Review: THE SHADOW OF THE WIND is a publishing sensation in the author's native country of Spain. It is now sweeping the world. It is a big book- very long and very detailed. The strength of the work lies in the interpersonal relationships of the characters and the mysterious compelling story that keeps the pages turning.
The plot hinges around Daniel, son of a Barcelona bookseller who upon turning ten years old in 1945, is brought by his father to a very large institution called the Cemetary of Forgotten Books. He is instructed to select a book out of the millions of books in the mazelike network of bookshelves and to treasure that book forever. The book he selects is called THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by Julian Carax. Daniel reads the book, loves it and wants to read other books by that author. To his amazement, there are almost no others in the world. It is his seach for the author and his books that leads Daniel onto a path that will forever change his life. It also brings him into direct conflict with a very sadistic police inspector and a mysterious masked man who insists on obtaining every book written by Carax and burning it.
In a sense, I am unsure as to what type of book Carlos Ruiz Zafon intended to write. In the beginning, there is a sense of the fantastic in the descriptions of the edifice known as The Cemetary of Forgotten Books. It then evolves into a story of the young Daniel as we watch him grow up and fall in love. Danger lurks in his search for Carax and we begin to see parallels in the lives of the growing young man and the mysterious author. Is it a fantasy? A mystery? A coming of age story? A thriller? The answer is a bit of all of the above. One thing it definitely is is a remarkably adept debut novel- a bit too long- but truly brilliant nonetheless.
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