The Name of the Wind

Let's start with some good points: the plot and pacing are engaging, the currencies and magic systems are worked out excellently, and the narration and frame narrative complement each other. I genuinely enjoyed reading it. But good grief is it male-gazey. Every women is introduced as physically beautiful, and most are in some way enamoured with the male protagonist. The double-edged respite is that the story doesn't include many women. sigh I found my enjoyment improved tenfold whenever I ignored the author's decision to make a character masculine. Honestly most of those choices of gender were just pointless and detracting on the author's part — why only men? Rothfuss' is a world I would abhor to live in. The author tries to get as much mileage as possible out of every interesting word; he does this by repeating that interesting word a couple chapters later, as if scared it'll slip back into the thesaurus if he doesn't use it again quickly. All this to say, the writing style is a little uninspired. My edition also had spelling mistakes. (Several.) So while the detailed magic system, economy and systems of measurement are rare — exceptional — in a book, perhaps the author had more pressing aspects of this novel he should have devoted attention to instead.

It took me a few weeks to finish this because I didn't want it to end. Now I can't wait to read book 2 and the novella before book 3.

"'Ye Gods,' Elodin sighed, disgusted. 'A bootlicker too. You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.'"

Many people, including Michael (my infallible source of amazing epic choices of books) have been telling me that this is a very good book. Circumstances conspired to make me wait, and with the hype dampened, I felt it an appropriate time to pick this up. I'm glad I decided eventually to read it, because it's turned out to be everything everyone promised.

"'If a girl as fair as that looked at me with one eye the way she looked at you with two . . . We'd have a room by now, to say it carefully.'"

I started the book and was a little surprised not to be fully engrossed. The Scrale caught my interest, and there was evidently more to our illustrious many-named innkeeper than met the eye, but other than that, things seemed slow and fairly pedestrian. It was at the start of chapter 8, of course - the real start of Kvothe's story - that I really began to get into this book.

"Her expression brightened, as if someone had lit a candle inside her and she was glowing from its light."

I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot I didn't like about this book. Some of the chapters were insanely short - hardly worth the pagebreaks, I thought once. The jerks between telling the story at the Waystone and being swept up in the narrative were often jarring, and though this is perhaps intentional, it unsettled me so much that I would use them as places to put down the book and go and make a cup of tea. Thirdly, there's lots of things you can't, or won't, or don't understand, according to Rothfuss. The size of a large city which you "cannot understand if you haven't seen it", that you don't "really understand the ocean", you can't "really understand how embarrassing it is " to be poor. You "may understand how my mind felt", you "won't understand why this was so easy" - the list goes on. It goes on so much that, I found myself stopping and thinking 'Well aren't you telling the damn story? It's your job to make us understand, isnt it?'

"I wish I were as brave and young as you."

Still, for all that, something compelled me to read on. The story itself isn't overtly impressive, though Kvothe is a raconteur of the highest order and very easy to like. I've seen this book compared with works of [a:J. K. Rowling|4918045|Rowling J K|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] and [a:Robin Hobb|25307|Robin Hobb|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205023525p2/25307.jpg], both of whom I've read and greatly enjoyed. There are many elements of the Bildungsroman in Kvothe's story, too, which increases its accessibility.

"I slung the travelsack over my shoulder and cinched it tight across my back. Then I thumbed on my sympathy lamp, picked up the hatchet, and began to run.
I had a dragon to kill."

I said not overtly impressive, and the t therein was placed intentionally. I think the appeal of this epic, for me, is in the subliminal. I say this because though the story is OK and the characters are INTERESTING and the magic is CURIOUS and the history PROVOKING, by themselves they're just parts of a story. The thing that ties them all up together is the language. And, of course, lacking Rothfuss' skill, I can't impart much more than that. There's... a poetry. a meter to things. A cadence, if you will - the words, the very sentences at times seem to flow like water, and when you read the next, you sort of feel that it was inevitable that it be what it was because nothing else makes sense, because nothing else would simply fall into place. Imagery, I suppose you can call it. Sir Savien, The Depiction of Kvothe's opus at the Eolian is one such place that sticks in my mind, as I flip back through the book. I read it in a noisy environment without the time and dedication a good book deserves and yet I came away moved. Similarly, the few pages with the horse Keth-Selhan jumped at me as holding a great milieu.

So I suppose it's fair to say that despite my reservations, I still had places where I couldn't put this book down. It was truly excellent, in places, and I'll be looking forward to the next one - though not straight away. Some time to digest is certainly on the cards.

[3.5 rounded up to 4 stars]

There were enough things that frustrated me in this book to prevent a higher rating. The dialog and narration are occasionally awkward, some patterns (such as nearly every chapter ending with something along the lines of "little did I know how wrong I was about to be proven") are irritating, and while chasing after the careless girl when there's no shortage of superior options is romantic (if not idiotic) ...it does make me feel less sympathy for the protagonist when it gets him into trouble.

That said, the book was a lot of fun. Yes, it slowed down a good deal around the halfway mark, and I got the feeling that a lot of people, places, and stories were introduced that are not important and will not be resolved in the next book (and reviews of the next book seem to agree). But for some reason I didn't mind too much. Reading THE NAME OF THE WIND felt a lot like reading a [a:Jay Lake|234088|Jay Lake|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1245101039p2/234088.jpg] book; the world-building is impressive and the settings stick in your head, but the plot itself meanders and sidesteps and cheats you with too much Deus Ex Machina.

I'll definitely read [b:The Wise Man's Fear|1215032|The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)|Patrick Rothfuss|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1297311431s/1215032.jpg|2502882], and even if I like it less than THE NAME OF THE WIND, I'll read the next book too. Despite my complaints, I really like the world Rothfuss has created here, and I'm anxious to go back.