Book Review: The Wise Man's Fear

About a year and a half ago, I reviewed The Name of the Wind, bought The Wise Man's Fear, and went to a Patrick Rothfuss author event all in the span of two days.  You'd think with such fervor devoted to one author, I'd have read The Wise Man's Fear long before now.  Well, shit, I thought I would have too.  Okay, so this wont be the most timeliest of reviews ever, but what matters is that I did get around to reading and reviewing this monster of a novel.

And oh, what a monster it is.  A monster in terms being one of the biggest fantasy novels released in the past couple of years, and a monster in terms of sheer size and girth.

I have been known to steer clear of giant cinder-block sized books, but The Name of the Wind left me with very high expectations for its sequel.  Expectations which likely likely colored my enjoyment of this volume a bit, as I was left feeling some twines of disappointment despite this being an all-around fantastic book.

The Wise Man's Fear picks up the story more or less right where things left off on the previous volume.  It's late in the night after the shocking events at the Waystone Inn, and when morning comes, Kote and the chronicler pick up the story of Kvothe's youth at pretty much the same spot where the storytelling left off the night before.  I'd like to say that Rothfuss ramped the story up a notch or two, but instead the story lingered while depicting the ins and outs of Kvothe's life at the University.  It was hard for me to not see the parallels between Kvothe's life at the University, and Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts.  That's not really a bad thing, as Rothfuss, like Rowling, has a great skill for writing incredibly engaging stories, but this portion of the story felt a little too recycled for my tastes.

The good news is, Kvothe doesn't spend the whole book at the University.  Not by a long shot. In fact, Kvothe spends a good portion of this novel out exploring the great wide world.  That's when things get interesting.  Kvothe's character starts to develop and he begins his path towards becoming a living legend. Along the way, during his attempts to unveil some secrets about the Amyr and the Chandrian, he rises in status in a far off royal court, learns some of the martial skills of the Adem Mercenaries, and ventures into the Fae realm for an extended love affair.

I enjoyed the fact that Rothfuss took things away from the University for a big stretch of this novel, and it was cool to see Kvothe in a bunch of different situations. At the same time, it wasn't easy for me to get completely lost in the stream of events.  For my tastes, a lot of the tension has been taken out of the story by having Kvothe tell his own tale. As a reader, I don't like knowing, without a doubt, that Kvothe will survive no matter how sticky the situation he finds himself in, and there's some incredibly sticky ones to be had.

Personally, I tend to be more engaged in a story when I fret for the safety and survival of the main characters, which is why I've been enjoying the brief interludes at the Waystone Inn way more than I have the yarn that Kote has been spinnin' to the Chronicler.  There's much more tension involved, and definitely a greater premonition of doom than there is in the main portion of the book.  Yes, I am enjoying both narrative threads of The Kingkiller Chronicles,  due in large fact that Rothfuss is a fantastic story teller, but I've found that I'm more interested in what is about to go down, rather than what has gone down already.

Though there's tons going on in this second volume of The Kingkiller Chronicle, there's also very little movement in what I perceive of as being the main plot, that of Kvothe's struggle with the Chandrian and his struggle to find out more about them.  A fact that is a little frustrating given the epic length of this novel.

As I mentioned earlier, The Wise Man's Fear left me with a slight taste of disappointment.  I felt like there wasn't a lot of movement in terms of the greater, overarching struggle, the beginning third of the book felt too akin to Harry Potter, and story,  for my tastes, lacks some much needed tension.

All that said, this is still a strong novel.  As I mentioned earlier, Rothfuss is one incredibly sharp story teller.  He's so good in fact that he can almost make me forget all my nit-picks and get totally lost in this great tale.  Tension or not, there's plenty of great story here, and The Wise Man's Fear is still one of the more entertaining books on my shelves, and one of the better fantasies released in the past few years.

I'll be looking forward to the concluding third volume whenever it finds its way to publication, as I have a ton of burning questions and plot pay-offs that I can't wait to see unfold.  Sure, this volume didn't hit all the high notes for me, but I've learned that my expectations can be a dangerous thing.  Make no mistake, Rothfuss is one of my top writers in the genre, and I can't wait to see what he has in store for us next.

Grade: B+

Author Event: Patrick Rothfuss

Yesterday, the book every fantasy fan has been waiting for finally came out.  No, not that one, I'm talking about Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.  Even though I only had to wait like, four days, most everyone else has waited about four years.  Even sweeter than not having to wait ages, my city, Seattle, got first crack at Pat as the very first leg of his book tour.

The event was scheduled to take place at 7 pm, but when I showed up at the bookstore around 4:30 to purchase Wise Man's Fear there were already a few superfans milling about.  Their extreme earliness gave me a bit of a chuckle and I probably called them "nerds" or something under my breath.  Knowing there was still tons of time before the event, but not enough time to bus home and do something useful, I instead sipped some tea and did some reading in the store's cafe.  Around 5:15 I poked my head into the author event area and saw that 50 or 60 folks were already staking out seats for the event!  Bear in mind that 50-60 souls is about average for most of the fantasy author events I've been to at this store, however it was still a solid two hours before the event!  At this point I decided that all Pat Rothfuss fans were much more hardcore than I'd anticipated, and also that this Rothfuss guy might actually be a big deal or something. 

However, I am a stubborn bastard at the best of times, and I refused to claim a seat and just sit there for two hours.  Plus, I was hungry.  So I went and ate pizza.  When I came back around 6pm, any hope of getting a seat had long since disappeared, and I was relegated to standing room only.  By 7pm when the event began, my guess is that anywhere between 500-750 people were in attendance.  Easily the most people I've ever seen at an event there and even more than when GRRM was there touring A Feast for Crows.  As surprised as I was by the numbers, when Pat came out his jaw nearly dropped to the floor, and a huge smile made its way to his face.  It's gotta be an awesome feeling to go to a book signing the day your new book comes out and be greeted by hundreds of cheering fans. 

The event itself was also pretty great.  Pat cracked a lot of jokes, and of all the authors I've met, he wins the award for funniest...though I will say the fantasy book reading crowd is a pretty easy audience to get a chuckle out of.  Guess we're just a carefree bunch.  Pat fielded a lot of questions, and the event definitely had a "hangin' out with Pat" feel to it despite the massive amounts of people.  He also read the prologue, from Wise Man's Fear, took some more questions, read us some of his poetry, told stories, took more questions, and signed books. 

He mentioned that he anticipates the third book will be out in 100 years, and added that it could come out sooner than that, but probably not for a couple years.  Some other subjects his discussion touched on are buying the rights to Firefly, his extreme hatred of spoilers, (he once spit on a friend for spoiling part of season five of Angel), child rearing, and the world of The Four Corners of Civilization, which may or may not be flat. 

He also discussed how the Kingkiller Chronicles went from having all three books finished, to needing years of rewrites.  Rothfuss said that when he wrote the books ten years ago, he thought they were totally awesome.  However, back than he referred to himself as a "feral writer";  not part of a writing group and had little formal training.  Now, with improved skills, and hindsight, he said that some parts are still awesome, and other parts need rewriting, in some cases lot of it.  What impressed me was his dedication to writing the best possible book, no matter how long it took him.

Sacrilegious as this may sound, I did not stick around to get my books signed.  I know, what an idiot I am right?  Well, truth be told, I did stick around for about an hour of the signing session, but I was wedged pretty good into a corner and even after an hour of signing, the crowd hadn't thinned out that much.  Faced with pending school work, an ever increasingly less frequent bus schedule that was my only way home, and a line that seemed endless, I decided to call it a night.  So, slight disappointment there at the end, but that's just the way it is.  Still, it was cool to hear Rothfuss speak, and it's nice to know that he's a pretty cool guy, and definitely deserving of his hordes of fans.

Review: The Name of the Wind

My Dad always says "hindsight is always 20-20".  Looking back, I wish I had read The Name of the Wind a lot sooner, it's a pretty flippin' awesome book, but in many ways, my timing here is perfect.  Not only is the sequel coming out Today, but the man hisself, Patrick Rothfuss will be doing an author event thingy at my favorite local bookstore here in Seattle today as well!  So, I plan to pick up the sequel Wise Man's Fear and get both of 'em signed, which'll be pretty awesome.  But enough about the sequel, for now, I'm here to talk about The Name of the Wind.

The Name of the Wind starts out in a humble inn, located in a small, out of the way town.  The innkeeper is a man named Kote, but from very early on, it is pretty obvious that "Kote" is actually Kvothe (pronounced Quothe), a living legend for a wide array of reasons.  Kote appears to be hiding from his past, or maybe he's hiding from the future, as there are some hints at foul things ahead, but either way, Kote does not wish for people to know his true identity.  All of that is for naught, as a recently robbed man, known as "The Chronicler" is rescued by Kote from demonic spider-like creatures and  brought to the inn for patching up.  The Chronicler figures out Kote's true identity easily enough, and he even convinces Kvothe to tell him his life's story.  After careful consideration, Kvothe decides he'll share his tale, but the telling will take three days.  The Name of the Wind contains all the bits of Kvothe's life story that he told on the first day.

For the most part, The Name of the Wind deals with Kvothe's teenage years, but it also discusses his family life as a  member of a traveling performance troupe, where he began to learn some magical talents from an arcanist named Abenthy.  Though his early days seemed pretty idyllic, he soon winds up as a beggar on the streets of Tarbean.  After a few rough years on the streets, Kvothe gains enrollment at The University, a school that teaches magic.  There Kvothe hopes to learn about the Chandrian, a fabled, mysterious group who may be responsible for the greatest tragedy in Kvothe's life. 

For his sheer ability to spin a provocative and addictive tale, Patrick Rothfuss has gained me as a fan.  I got easily sucked into this story, and had a hard time putting it down.  The pace of the story moves quite nicely, and I found myself caught up in Kvothe's story quite easily.  That said, this wasn't the perfect debut novel.

For my money, too much time was spent at The University.  Yes, it plays a vital role in the story, and is crucial to giving Kovthe the skills he'll need if he's ever gonna become the legend that he hints at being, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading Harry Potter for grown ups.  He's got a teacher that hates him, a dick-head, pompous, and rich student rival, a school filled with secrets, drama with girls, and so on.  While all of this was well written and interesting, better than Harry Potter in my opinion, I still got a bit of the been-there-done-that feeling while reading those sections.  This personal gripe of mine should be remedied soon enough as Kvothe's tale moves past his time at The University.

Make no mistake, I truly believe Rothfuss is a skilled writer, and has potential to be one of the best in the genre, and his character building is a good example of his skill.  Kvothe himself is one of the most interesting characters I've come across, and I get the feeling that by the end of the series he'll be unforgettable.  His apprentice, Bast, The Chronicler, and the patrons of his inn all came to life on the page, and I got the sense that I was spending an evening with them all at the inn.  However, while the present day characters felt fleshed out and developed, I felt like many of the characters from Kvothe's past were a bit flimsy.  I had a hard time visualizing what Denna, Kvothe's love interest, was actually like, or what she looked like, and the same goes for his friends, teachers, and his chief rival Ambrose at The University.  I wonder if that was deliberate on Rothfuss' part, to make the people of the past to be less vivid than those in the present day, or if it was just a blemish in Rothfuss' developing writerly skills.

Like I said earlier, Rothfuss has an amazing ability for telling an engrossing tale.  The journey through Kvothe's youth was fascinating, and engrossing, and I love how it was entwined with present day events that seem to hint at amazing and epic things to come.  That said, I felt like the ending itself was a little bit bland, and anticlimactic.  Especially given that much more epic things had been hinted at throughout the narrative.  Still, having the sense that bigger and better things are on the horizon make me all the more eager for the next book.

One thing I noticed while reading The Name of the Wind is that it is all to easy to forget that this is a debut novel.  There are times when Rothfuss writes with the best of the genre, which probably makes the few weaknesses I mentioned stand out even more.  For the majority of the time Rothfuss is extremely eloquent and engrossing.  The writing is of a pretty high caliber, and the scary thing is, he'll probably only get better as the years, and best selling novels go by.

The Name of the Wind is an awesome beginning to what looks to be a great fantasy series.  The book hints at a lot of epic things just over the horizon, and there is a large degree of mystery involved too, which has me anxious for some answers.  I'm typically skeptical of brick sized fantasy novels, but Rothfuss drowned those fears in a great story, great characters and a setting I'm excited to read more about.  There's definitely a few flaws, but I have a good feeling about this series.  Definitely worth a read.

Grade: B+