(no subject)

[skygiants]

jothra recommended me Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, and I always take Jo's advice!

(. . . well, okay, not always. Especially not when it involves healthy food or cracked-out plots (all right, that's a lie, I pretty much do always take her suggestions when it comes to cracked-out plots). ANYWAYS.)

The Shadow of the Wind is a gothic story centered around two things - obsessive love, and obsessive book-love. It is unsurprising that I liked parts about obsessive book-love best! The protagonist is a teenaged boy who reads a book when he is young called The Shadow of the Wind, falls in love with it and the author, Julian Carax, and then finds out that it is basically the only copy in existence because a Mysterious and Possibly Fictional Person is going around and burning all of the author's books. (Note: I totally called who this Mysterious Person was, which is probably not all that impressive but makes me feel smug anyways!) So then of course he becomes entwined in hunting out the secrets of Carax's Tragic Past. Much Gothic awesomeness ensues, including haunted houses and mad hatters and girls locked away in towers and SURPRISE INCEST ZOMG, which I totally should have called and didn't, seeing as incest is apparently in EVERYTHING now.

I love me some Gothic twists, and I love characters who love their books, so I enjoyed this book a lot! The writing is also pretty awesome in a lot of places. There were, however, a couple things that would have improved it for me that I will put here:

1. I am sorry but I kind of hated Fermin. Less Fermin would make this a better book. Daniel can be his own comic relief! OR he can have BETTER FRIENDS.
2. I really, really wish that Nuria had not been in love with Carax, but had just been another obsessive reader like Daniel. The female characters had so much potential to be awesome here, and then Bea de-snarkifies and becomes The Girl, Clara (the other female book-lover) is The Temptress Who Dumped Him And Will Die Bitter and Alone, and Nuria's story becomes all about her tragic and impossible love. That whole section would have been ten times as interesting for me if she had not been in love with Carax, I would have forgiven all in terms of feminist quibbles. Hey Mr. Zafon, it is possible for ladies to have motivations that are not about Being Desperately In Love! Even some nineteenth-century Gothics do better than that, and you do not have that excuse.
3. More Tomas. I loved Tomas, for the three pages we got of him!
4. PLZ NO EVIL VOODOO MULATTO STEREOTYPES oh gosh I was cringing through that part
5. I would say fewer miracle super-speedy pregnancies, but . . . what the heck, this is a Gothic. The miracle pregnancies can stay!

Absolutely the best part was the center set-piece of the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, and it sounds like that is going to be the starting point for his next book also, which pretty much ensures that I will be reading it!