Book Review: The Shadow of the Wind

Last month, a much awaited book came out in the United States, The Prisoner of Heaven. In anticipation, I read the first book as part of the series, The Shadow of the Wind. It's sometimes difficult to find a truly unique book when you read 200+ books a year and feel as if you've seen it all. The Shadow of the Wind is not only a super-unique book, but it's a book that does a lot of things at the same time, and all of them extremely well.

The book is centered around an author, Julian Carax, and his works. After Daniel reads The Shadow of the Wind, a book by Carax, he tries to seek out other works by Carax and uncovers a rather fantastical conspiracy involving murder, the Devil, and the author himself.

The book is a fantasy (the book in the story was found in the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, a place with countless volumes), and a murder mystery/noir, and a fictional biography, and a love letter to books and reading and writing as well. It fills a lot of different roles, and does so with significant ease. Worth noting as well is that the book is a translation from Spanish, and it reads and flows beautifully in English - too often, translations lose the nature of the text, and that wasn't an issue here.

This is a book that, really, everyone should look into. Rock solid from start to finish, and it is a series, so hopefully this can lead to even more quality stories from this universe.