Earn Your Happy Ending: Alicia Gris just wants to get out of the Secret Police and live a quiet life away from the machinations of the Francoist government. On her final assignment, she uncovers a massive government conspiracy that itself uncovers a shadow war in the Franco government that itself uncovers a murder plot. By the end of the book, she's personally killed most of the people involved. The last we see of her she's boarding a cruise ship for America. In the final portion of the book, Fermin confirms to Julian Sempere she died peacefully in America after thirty years of traveling the country.

and metaphorical sanctuary for those fleeing political danger. It is also a place where acquiring a library card is a difficult task, and those who earn one cherish the books they can choose and read, suggesting that Zafón is responding to Spain’s history of banning, burning, hiding, and making books a political weapon.Courtesy of HarperCollins The Alcoholic: Since this is late-50s and early-60s Spain and massive alcohol consumption was just an accepted part of the culture, quite a few characters are functioning alcoholics. Vargas is mindful of his intake after killing his family in a drunk driving accident but still has brandy in his coffee, while Alicia readily admits that she self-medicates for both pain and PTSD with booze and is chugging white wine in virtually every scene she's in. Meanwhile, Fermin travels everywhere with a flask of what's essentially moonshine and drinks champagne for breakfast. Across four long English novels, such emphasis on the power and pleasure of books would risk being thought a gesture to conservative views on education or a diversion from more pressing societal issues. But in Spanish history, the fate of literature has consistently been a test of the severity of legislative and ecclesiastical politics. So the concealed libraries and hunted-for publications in the quartet represent Spain’s shameful piles of books that were burned, redacted, banned or hidden in secret stores because of the moral policing of kings, cardinals and dictators. Forever the past will remain our reality no matter how we intervene to fix its results .. We will not cancel what happened, no matter how ugly. Sobre el final pienso que Zafón no tuvo alternativa. Con otro final, de inmediato la pregunta sería ¿Quién es el protagonista de la tetralogía? Pero diciendo que Julián está contando la historia de su familia, convierte el final en un truco sacado de la manga para solucionar el problema que se le estaba viniendo de hacer cuatro historias paralelas con protagonistas distintos. ¿Me gustó? Más que gustarme me pareció correcto porque ser testigo del triste final de algunos personajes no me puede dejar contento. Debido a ese final fue que sentí tristeza por acabar esta tetralogía, más que todo por el final de Carax y por Juan Sempere con su vacío existencial que me parte el corazón. No me gustaría nunca ser Juan Sempere, pobre hombre.Ricardo Lomana, Alicia's missing former mentor and sexual harasser, turns out to have been murdered before the events of the book.

Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The response of Valls' ambiguously named, elderly jailer when Daniel breaks into the prison. In the one scene told from his point of view he makes it clear he's only taken the assignment for much-needed retirement money and is the one person involved in the revenge/coverup with no personal or political connections. Once it becomes clear all of his paymasters are dead, he's more than happy to walk away and let things play themselves out. Zafon responds to us denouncing: Have you ever met someone who did or wrote what was not written yet? I write your life: as a reader

The Labyrinth of the Spirits

As a child, Daniel Sempere discovered among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books an extraordinary novel that would change the course of his life. Now a young man in the Barcelona of the late 1950s, Daniel runs the Sempere & Sons bookshop and enjoys a seemingly fulfilling life with his loving wife and son. Yet the mystery surrounding the death of his mother continues to plague his soul despite the moving efforts of his wife Bea and his faithful friend Fermín to save him. Bookends: For the entire Cemetery series. The very first entry, Shadow of the Wind, begins with Juan Sempere taking a young Daniel to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This one ends with Daniel's adult son, Julian, taking his daughter to the Cemetery.