OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Daniel Weyman ably performs the final installment in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet. Primarily set in Barcelona, the story focuses on the last mission of secret police agent Alicia Gris, who must return to her native city where 20 years earlier she was orphaned during the Spanish Civil War. Weyman beautifully balances the plot layers, taking a light tone when describing young love and increasing the tension and tightening his delivery when Alicia and her partner are targeted for assassination after discovering long-buried Franco government corruption. Family secrets, rare books, and unexpected allies round out the satisfying conclusion to the series. Weyman’s British accent detracts from the Spanish atmosphere of the story, but his believable pronunciations and solid characterizations fully capture listeners’ attention. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 09/10/2018
Zafón follows 2012’s The Prisoner of Heaven with the conclusion to his Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet, a gripping and moving thriller set in Franco’s Spain that’s fully accessible to newcomers. In 1959, 29-year-old Alicia Gris, a capable, insightful operative working for the Spanish secret police in Madrid who will remind readers of Lisbeth Salander, is tapped by her superior, Leandro Montalvo, for a sensitive inquiry. Spain’s Minister of Culture, Don Mauricio Valls, who’s been the target of anonymous threats and was the subject of a failed assassination attempt, has disappeared. The authorities believe that Valls was pursuing a lead on his persecutor on his own. Leandro promises the emotionally worn-out Alicia that she can leave his employ after this last assignment. When Alicia investigates, she discovers that Valls hid an unusual and valuable children’s book in his Madrid mansion—The Labyrinth of the Spirits VII—and this in turn leads her to a Barcelona prison, where Valls was in charge during WWII. Fans of complex and literate mysteries featuring detectives with integrity working under oppressive and corrupt regimes will be well satisfied. (Sept.)
The Mail on Sunday (UK)
Zafón is a master storyteller, combining the postmodern and the traditional in an enchanting hymn to literature…Magnificent…A dizzying tale of drama, intrigue and passion.”
The Sydney Morning Herald
Zafon’s vision is one of the complexity of human experience, reveling in language.
PW ShelfTalker
THE LABYRINTH OF THE SPIRITS is the sublime culmination to a truly outstanding series. Set in Barcelona from 1938 through the 1970s, these books deftly combine the world of bookselling, the long shadow of the Spanish Civil War, gothic literary interplay, wonderfully salty characters, sublime dialogue and verbal sparring, along with elaborate and satisfying exposition. Taken together or individually they represent a reading experience not to be missed…reading Labyrinth first would have given a sublime insight into any of the other books…As long as you actually open a door to the labyrinth and enter it, all is well. As to not reading the Cemetery of Forgotten books at all, that is obviously a grave error.”
BookPage
It is a bittersweet return to Barcelona for fans of Zafón, as he concludes his internationally beloved, labyrinthine Cemetery of Forgotten Books series (The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, The Prisoner of Heaven) with an operatic finale, drawing together all the threads as a rare book unveils a conspiracy that runs through Spanish history.” “The plot is exquisitely intricate, like an elaborate steampunk timepiece. Alicia, a fragile but ferociously formidable, vampire-like seductress, is unforgettable. The pacing is exceptional, with its incessant, rolling waves of tension. Even the dialogue is remarkably sharp and fresh…The Labyrinth of the Spirits is a masterpiece…Readers’ one regret will be that Labyrinth is the last in this ingenious cycle.”
Booklist
Gothic, operatic, and in many ways old-fashioned, this is a story about storytelling and survival, with the horrors of Francoist Spain present on every page. Compelling…this is for readers who savor each word and scene, soaking in the ambience of Barcelona, Zafón’s greatest character (after, perhaps, the irrepressible Fermín Romero de Torres).
Historical Novel Society
A compelling, multi-faceted, and haunting work of art told by a master storyteller. To say that the writing is brilliant is an understatement. Carlos Ruiz Zafón respects every word, taking his time to develop and do justice to the major, minor, and irrelevant characters, places, things, or situations in order to recreate a dark time in Spain’s history and ensure that the reader not only bears witness to it but is immersed in it and feels it…An epic novel that is also an ode to writing and to the undying thirst for knowledge through reading.
Bustle
A mystery, a love letter to books, and a magical adventure all wrapped up in one, this book is a masterful work of literature that will invigorate your love of reading.”
Washington Book Review
Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a gifted storyteller who knows how to capture his readers’ attention. Packed with suspense, The Labyrinth of the Spirits is a gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller. As you read this chilling thriller, you feel as if your pounding heart is missing a beat.
The Guardian
A colossal achievement…a genre-crossing delight… Publishers dream of novels that appeal to habitual readers and to those seeking one big book to last a holiday, and that is what Zafon’s quartet has delivered. His trick is to have linked multiple genres – fantasy, historical, romance, meta-fictional, police-procedural and political – through prose of atmospheric specificity.”
O: The Oprah Magazine
Intricate and sublime.
Barnes &Noble "September Pick"
A literary feast!
Library Journal
★ 08/01/2018
Ruiz Zafón's fourth book in the "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" series (after The Prisoner of Heaven) takes place in Spain from 1938 to the 1970s. Familiar characters from the first three books are living under the repressive, deadly regime of Francisco Franco. Daniel Sempere and wife Bea run a book shop. Fermin survived the fascist bombings of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and during one attack saved the life of badly injured nine-year-old Alicia Gris. Carrying mental and physical scars and now working as a kind of "fixer" for the police, Alicia is the focus here as she's sent on an assignment that brings her back to Barcelona and into the lives of Fermin and the Semperes. All is not as it appears and the ingrained character of violence, lies, and silence that defined the actions of the police and the government for almost four decades lead to a surprising ending. VERDICT At approximately 800 pages, this book is a commitment, but it is one well worth making. Complex characters, rich language, and intrigue make it a story to be savored. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/18.]—Terry Lucas, Shelter Island P.L., NY
OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Daniel Weyman ably performs the final installment in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet. Primarily set in Barcelona, the story focuses on the last mission of secret police agent Alicia Gris, who must return to her native city where 20 years earlier she was orphaned during the Spanish Civil War. Weyman beautifully balances the plot layers, taking a light tone when describing young love and increasing the tension and tightening his delivery when Alicia and her partner are targeted for assassination after discovering long-buried Franco government corruption. Family secrets, rare books, and unexpected allies round out the satisfying conclusion to the series. Weyman’s British accent detracts from the Spanish atmosphere of the story, but his believable pronunciations and solid characterizations fully capture listeners’ attention. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2018-07-02
Ruiz Zafón brings his sprawling Cemetery of Forgotten Books tetralogy to a close that throws in everything but the kitchen sink, but that somehow works.It's a very nice touch—spoiler alert—that the female lead of Ruiz Zafón's latest should use a pen to do in a bad guy in a spectacularly gruesome way: "He collapsed instantly," he writes gleefully, "like a puppet whose strings had been severed, his trembling body stretched out over the books." Books are everywhere, of course, inasmuch as this story begins and ends in the hands of the bookseller Daniel Sempere Gispert, who, as ever, is caught up in stories that are in part of his own devising and in part the product of other storytellers—altogether very Cervantesque, that. The story begins in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War, when a very young Alicia Gris, that female lead, comes into the orbit of Fermín Romero de Torres, himself a bookish fellow who connects to Alicia immediately through her love of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Anything to do with falling down a hole and bumping into madmen and mathematical problems is something I consider highly autobiographic," he tells her. Fermín harbors secrets: As readers of earlier volumes will know, he has been imprisoned as a spy in Franco's jails, and a certain jailer who has risen in the ranks of the postwar Nationalist government is due for some payback—retribution that involves, yes, books and writers and literary clues and all manner of puzzles. Ruiz Zafón clearly has had a great deal of fun in pulling this vast story together, and if one wishes for a little of the tightness of kindred spirit Arturo Perez-Reverte, his ability to keep track of a thousand threads while, in the end, celebrating the power of storytelling is admirable. Take that pen, for instance, which "is like a cat—it only follows the person who will feed it." Even, it seems, if that food is vitreous fluid….A satisfying conclusion to a grand epic that, of course, will only leave its fans wanting more.
