Literature Light. If you like your novels bland, insipid and unchallenging, Shadow of the Wind is probably for you. The prose is plain, the characters are two dimensional, a the plot – while it desperately aspires to be a thriller – is about as sleepy and predictable as they come. A couple of the characters are potentially interesting – the ex spy and the grisly police chief – but the book is an overall failure to conjure anything further than a mild malaise of boredom. Offering nothing intelligent or inspiring whatever I read it to the end only to justify my low opinion of it. There are many thousands of great books to read: This is not one of them.