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A review by abomine
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
This was...fine. It started out with a solid premise and a good mystery with a beautifully rendered setting prefect for Gothic fiction, but petered out pretty quickly about a quarter of the way through.
Rather than the reader solving the mystery alongside the protagonist, or having details slowly unfold over the course of the book, a lot of the information and 'clues' are fed to readers via long-ass flashbacks in which characters are privy to information they could not possibly have known. Considering how well-written the rest of Shadow of the Wind is, that felt like especially lazy writing.
I would also complain about how stereotypically-written the women characters are (they can all be boiled down to essentially flighty maidens, frigid bitches, or straight-up whores), but the men characters aren't particularly compelling either, so all of the characters, regardless of gender, are equally two-dimensional. The protagonist, Daniel, has potential to be an interesting lead (he's creative and full of big dreams, but also horny and cowardly, all of which frequently get him in trouble), but he doesn't get any real character development until the very last chapters, and by then it's too little, too late.
This book's villain, Fumero, was also pretty poorly handled. Imagine Robbie Rotten combined with Heath Ledger's version of The Joker, and then give him the basic-bitch backstory of "he was a weird kid growing up and probably has an undiagnosed mental illness and his mother abused him and he's just plain crazy", and you'll have a pretty accurate characterization of him. I'm never a fan of media portraying mental illness as monstrosity, especially with such a ludicrous character, so this docked Shadow of the Wind major points for me.
Really, the only good things going for this book are the writing and the setting, but I can't speak from personal experience for either. I have not read this book in its original Spanish, only an English translation, and I've never been to Barcelona. Still, these were the only two aspects of Shadow of the Wind that compelled me to finish it, and that should speak volumes.
Rather than the reader solving the mystery alongside the protagonist, or having details slowly unfold over the course of the book, a lot of the information and 'clues' are fed to readers via long-ass flashbacks in which characters are privy to information they could not possibly have known. Considering how well-written the rest of Shadow of the Wind is, that felt like especially lazy writing.
I would also complain about how stereotypically-written the women characters are (they can all be boiled down to essentially flighty maidens, frigid bitches, or straight-up whores), but the men characters aren't particularly compelling either, so all of the characters, regardless of gender, are equally two-dimensional. The protagonist, Daniel, has potential to be an interesting lead (he's creative and full of big dreams, but also horny and cowardly, all of which frequently get him in trouble), but he doesn't get any real character development until the very last chapters, and by then it's too little, too late.
This book's villain, Fumero, was also pretty poorly handled. Imagine Robbie Rotten combined with Heath Ledger's version of The Joker, and then give him the basic-bitch backstory of "he was a weird kid growing up and probably has an undiagnosed mental illness and his mother abused him and he's just plain crazy", and you'll have a pretty accurate characterization of him. I'm never a fan of media portraying mental illness as monstrosity, especially with such a ludicrous character, so this docked Shadow of the Wind major points for me.
Really, the only good things going for this book are the writing and the setting, but I can't speak from personal experience for either. I have not read this book in its original Spanish, only an English translation, and I've never been to Barcelona. Still, these were the only two aspects of Shadow of the Wind that compelled me to finish it, and that should speak volumes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Domestic abuse, and Police brutality
Moderate: Homophobia and Sexism