The Rose of Fire: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books #0.5

 

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves

The Rose of Fire is a short, short story - so short in fact that I managed to finish reading it in the 10- to 15-minute period I spent waiting for my take-out at a pizza place last week. While reading on the phone (with the awful backlight) wasn't very ideal for my poor eyes, I had to browse through my Kindle app anyway to look for something with which to pass the time. (But I forgive the pizza place if only for the sumptuous baked macaroni.) The Rose of Fire proved to be more than just the perfect quarter-of-an-hour entertainment; it also redefined what "light and quick read" is.

Have you read Zafon's earlier novel, The Shadow of the Wind? If you have, then you will be reacquainted with the Semperes and the labyrinthine library, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. If you haven't but you're planning on reading it in the future, near or distant, then what are you still waiting for?  reading this short story prior to picking up the novel is like reading a short backgrounder. Isn't it evident from how this teaser is listed as  #0.5 in the series?

If you have an Amazon account, you can download The Rose of Fire there where, when I last checked, it was free. It ought to be free, as it comprises only 34% of the entire e-book format while the remaining 66% contains the excerpt from Zafon's recent work, The Prisoner of Heaven.

Such short work deserves no more than an equally short write-up as this.

Recommended by: Louize
Book Details: My own, Kindle edition, free from Amazon
Rating: ★★★