This Book Wasn’t as Bad as I Thought…

I was pleasantly surprised when I started to read the first few chapters of the “Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. I found it very interesting how at the start of the novel the protagonist, Daniel Semper, finds a book called the “Shadow of the Wind” written by a unknown author which is the same title of the novel we are reading. But as I get further into the book I feel it turns from a mystery to a love story and it gets more and more sappy as it goes on.

The relationships in this story I find are very strange and different from what relationships are today. Daniel Semper, the main character of the book, is 11 years old at the start of the book and he lives with his dad because his mom passed away 7 years ago. This gives Daniel a lot of freedom because his dad runs a book store and there is nobody else to take care of him. When he meets Clara who is an expert on “Shadow of the Wind”, Daniel is rarely at home and always at her house reading to her and trying to find out more about the book and the author, Julian Carax. This is the most odd relationship in the book because as I said before Daniel is 11 and Clara is 21. If my parents ever found me in a relationship with someone 10 years older I would expect them to do something about it or at least say that it was wrong. Also I find it is strange how his dad never really cares where Daniel is because if I came home at 3 in the morning I think my parents would kill me instead of telling me to go to bed and be ready for work in the morning. But since in that time period there were no phones around, so there was no way to contact Daniel while he was out, it is a bit more understandable but still unacceptable for a child of his age to be out that late. This even happens on Daniel’s 16th birthday when his father stayed up all night to give him a pen he bought for a present. But since Daniel had a bad day with the crazy shadow man and walking in on Clara, he didn’t get home until very late on his own birthday.

I feel that the more I read the book the more confused I get because there are so many new characters being introduced into the story and so I feel it is hard to tell who is who. I think this happened because the author just ran out of ideas and this caused him to just add more people into the book to make it longer.

My experience reading this book has been very good since the pool is where I have done a lot of my reading. I have really enjoyed the beginning of the novel but now at chapter 25 I am getting quite bored of it since nothing very interesting has gone on in quite a while. I will finish the book and am hoping that by the end of the story the plot becomes more exciting and that I will have enjoyed myself since I am not a big fan of reading . And just maybe reading this book will make me want to read another one just for fun.

Yours truly,

Spicoli (Kyle Cestnik)