Review: Shadow Of The Wind By Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

This review will have some mild spoilers. I will try not to give any major or specific plot points away, and will speak more generally about the world, the characters, and plot concepts.

The review for Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon could be very short. It would go something like this...

"This is without a shadow of a doubt the best all-round book I've ever read. It's easily a 10 out of 10 for me, and anyone who likes books at all should read it."

End scene.

If I could describe the overall feel of this book, it's like it strikes a near perfect balance between literary, artistic fiction (like Yann Martel or Michael Ondaatje) with formulaic, mass appeal fiction (like Tom Clancy or Dan Brown). It is both easy to read and accessible like the latter, but with the depth and complexity of the former. It's a book lover's book, but also a book for everyone. I could gush about this book for a long time. But for the sake of every sane person's attention span, I'll keep this shorter.

Do You Remember Your First Love?

The book is set in Barcelona, Spain in 1945. The Spanish Civil War just ended, though the aftermath is still felt occasionally throughout the book. A young boy named Daniel still mourns the death of his mother, and to try and cheer him up his father – who works as an antiquarian book dealer – takes him to a secret bunker called the Graveyard of Books, which served to protect thousands of books from destruction during the war. Daniel is told to pick any one book and become its guardian, and he chooses Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax.

What happens next is what sold me on this book before I ever got into the main plot line: you have a young boy falling in love with a book for the first time. He stays up until the wee hours of the night... or morning, really... reading his book under the bed sheets by candlelight. The way in which Zafon describes Daniel's adoration of the book, the way he is so captivated and pulled into its world, touches very close to home with me. You can tell that Zafon is not only a book lover who knows (as I and many others do) what it feels like to truly lose oneself in a good story, but also has the ability to express in writing those sensations in breathtaking detail. That isn't all there is to this book either, because the same superb writing that painted such a charming and evocative scene here was present through to the last page.

Michelangelo Had His Brush, Zafon His Pen

He consumes ink for its power!

What helps make this book so great is Zafon's ability to paint beautiful scenes and settings, but he does it quickly and without bloated descriptions. I used the word 'evocative' above, and that's the best word I can think of to describe his style. He always uses the right words and phrases that can seize on the reader's imagination and use it to fill in the rest. It's similar to those artists who can craft an ultra-realistic scene with only a few quick and accurate strokes of their brush. 

This ability allows him to establish beautiful settings that captures the reader's imagination quickly, so he can move on to the development of his plot and characters. And because he is able to handle those with the same crisp efficiency, the book manages to avoid lulls and slow pacing that you might see in other books. Zafon's writing style is what allows him to add in elements of every kind of literature imaginable: it has mystery, romance, suspense, comedy, tragedy, action, and probably other things I can't remember off the top of my head.

In Conclusion

This is without a shadow of a doubt the best all-round novel I've ever read. It's easily a 10 out of 10 for me, and anyone who likes books at all should read it.

End scene.

Review: Gods Of Gotham By Lindsay Faye

This review will have some mild spoilers. I will try not to give any major or specific plot points away, and will speak more generally about the world, the characters, and plot concepts.

Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye is a historical mystery novel about the formation of New York's first regular police force in the 1840s. More specifically, it is about Timothy Wilde who is among those who find themselves recruited.

The Detective: A Soul On Fire

Timothy Wilde is a young man living in New York City as a bartender. His parents were killed in a fire, and his only family is his older brother, Valentine, a politician in the Democrat Party who are responsible for the newly created New York Police Department. Timothy happens to have a love-hate relationship with his drug addicted, smarmy politician of a brother.

But he's happy, mostly. As a bartender he learns how to talk to people, how to understand them, and most importantly of all how to read them. So when he finds himself, somewhat unwillingly it should be said, enrolled by his brother in the new police force he finds he has all the tools needed to be more than just a footman with a club. 

He is able to mix with just about every level of society, even if he doesn't want to. He can speak the slang dialect popular among the slums in the city, he knows at least a bit about what goes on in the different sections of the neighbourhoods: all the different cultures, religions, political camps, social groups. More importantly, he is able to navigate all of the tensions that are rising in the city. Which is a good thing, for him, because...

The Setting: A City On Fire

The setting is very charming and well crafted. Lindsay Faye does a great job setting the scene of New York during the historical period in which the book takes place. In the background of events, rumours reach the city of the Irish Potato Famine that will cause even more Irish to migrate to the United States and Faye helps illuminate the tensions between more established Protestant Americans and the Irish Catholic immigrants that arrive in increasing numbers. The immigrants from Ireland are poor and take all of the menial, poorly paid jobs if they get any jobs at all. Added to the mix are the African Americans living in the city, who are also poor, struggle to get the same crappy jobs as the Irish, and are also viewed with suspicion and derision by the non-poor, W.A.S.P. Americans. On top of which, there is the seedy, dark underworld of the city, where the child-sex trade is rampant and tolerated, even if it is illegal.

So there are many sources of problems and tensions for the new police force to contend with: Fights between the various groups, riots and protests by the WASPs against the Irish and the blacks, rampant prostitution, drugs and criminal activities, and the politics that could have them shut down before they even get their feet under them. 

The Mystery: Children On Fire

In the midst these situations, a nightmarish crime reveals itself in the form of a small girl found wandering the street and covered with blood. She is a kinchin-mab – a child prostitute, from the house of a woman who just so happens to be a prominent and large contributor to the Democratic party that created the police force. Timothy Wilde is the one to discover her, and slowly but surely finds out what she was running from.

What the girl tells him could cause widespread chaos and fear throughout the whole city, because it touches on all of the tensions that I touched on above. On top of which, it very quickly becomes entangled with Timothy's personal life, both with his brother and the woman he has longed to court. On a couple of occasions he almost gives up on the case and being a policeman entirely, on a few more he is almost killed, and it is only some unlikely sources of support that helps him stay on alive and on track.

The Conclusion: This Book's On Rapid Oxidation Of A Material In The Rapid Oxidation Of A Material In The Exothermic Chermical Process Of Combustion

If you didn't like the heading title above, you're not going to like many of my other attempts at humour.

This book is good mostly because of the setting that is skillfully put together. The characters are mostly interesting, with some very good ones. Unfortunately the main character is not among the best. The girl who is the heart of the book's mystery and Tim's brother Valentine steal the show for me, and even the Police Captain was more compelling a character for me. The mystery at the heart of the plot is a strong one, as it did a good job revealing all of the key characters (and the lesser ones) who could conceivably be suspects, while giving reasons for suspicion of each of them. I was kept guessing until the very end, and yet Faye gave enough clues that you don't feel cheated by something that came from left field and makes no sense. 

I would give this book an 8 out of 10, and I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries and/or historical fictions.