Tag Archives: Kingkiller Chronicles

The Slow Regard of Silent Things

71E+64So-kLAlthough not the concluding third day of his Kingkiller Chronicles[1][2], Patrick Rothfuss has recently released a book set in that world.[3] The Slow Regard of Silent Things is about a week in the life of one of the residents of, um, that magic college place not named Hogwarts where Kvothe is known to hang out. Which description is proof that I’ll need to reread these books once the finale is announced.[4]

But anyway, it’s about Auri, who hides from everyone and has reminded me just a very small amount of Lazlo from Real Genius if he were a Manic Pixie Dream Girl but without the sexual connotations. Which throws me headlong into what I had thought I was going to be edging towards. See, I have this website, where I write reviews of things. Although it’s dressed up a bit in the theme I have chosen, there’s really no connection between what I use it for and what it is named. It’s just that back in the ’90s, I really wanted a domain, and the domain that I wanted the most was the one named after my very favorite character in all of Sandman[5].

The upshot of which is, except for my reviews of the actual Sandman books, Auri in this story is the closest I’ve ever come on my website to finding Delirium in the wild, as it were. She is by turns breathless with happiness, reckless as lemmings, crushed under by the weight of the world, determined as any hero, or hopelessly lost at sea. I smiled with her and my heart broke for her, sometimes at the same time. I guess my point is that I cannot imagine a story more calculated to enchant me, personally. I cannot say that I identify with her, or even wish that I did. But as with Delirium herself, I wish I could heal her.

But I guess a point of those stories is that perfect delight cannot long survive the world.

[1] Spoiler alert for footnote 2
[2] Total number of kings killed thusfar: zero
[3] Also, the author’s afterword indicates there’s a short story I missed sometime in the past year or two. I kind of hate how easy it is for that to happen. Thanks a lot, compilations!
[4] On the one hand, I like not waiting for a series to be complete before I read it. On the other, I resent having to reread books by the time I’m getting near the end, since I’d rather just have the knowledge stored up and read new stuff instead. But my memory is not so eidetic as I’d like. It is a conundrum!
[5] And high in my top five favorite fictional characters, period.

The Wise Man’s Fear

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51tfhkACppLAfter what has perhaps been an unreasonably long time, the first of two sequels to The Name of the Wind came out earlier this month. It’s neither the longest I’ve waited for a sequel nor the most excited I’ve been for one to come out, but for a second book in a series and/or a second book ever, it is both of these things. And then, over the several weeks I took reading it, not to mention the several internet-famous people who had advanced reading copies, really a lot of people have gushed extensively about how good of a book it is, even better than the original.

All of which has conspired to make me nervous about my review of The Wise Man’s Fear. As expected, it continues the infamous Kvothe’s recounting of his life story to the biographer who had come in search of him, a story that contains magic, growing fame, bandits, faeries, revenge, chases, escapes, and quite possibly true love. And the thing is, on the one hand, I thought it was a fantastic story, with all kinds of internal and external twists, interesting and reasonable character development, and a storyline that, while just slightly uneven, is all the more believable for that; I was never bored, but neither was I ever rolling my eyes at the sense of it being a story rather than a man’s life. Kvothe himself has grown just slightly unlikeable, a sense I never got from the first book. But I don’t mind, because the bravery of the choice has paid off, and Kvothe-as-narrator seems slightly more reliable for showing his worse moments to us.

For all of that, there’s the other hand, where I didn’t find it to be a better book than the original, nor did I find Rothfuss’ prose to be as revelatory. Since I find both to be every bit as good as before, that seems like plenty enough praise in itself, and more than I’m used to, at least among the rarefied air of very good initial attempts. All the same, when I compare this review to the several others I’ve seen, I feel like I’m selling the book way too short. Maybe everyone else is like me, and the fact that a second volume is as good as a great first one is so unusual that it feels like it’s even better just by not having the expected drop-off in quality.

The Name of the Wind

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186074Last year, I read an author’s first book about which I had only the best to say. I like this kind of thing, because I get to know about a good author early in the career, and I can keep up over the progression and have thoughtful, chin-stroking opinions and pass on the news to other people to repay all the times that people have done this for me. The thing is, though, it really doesn’t happen very often. So you can imagine my surprise when I’ve got another one, a mere year and a half later.

The Name of the Wind tells the first third of a story that borrows liberally from the tone of Scott Lynch’s books, the voice of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos, and the plot, among many others, of Harry Potter. How many of these are actual influences I cannot guess, of course, but there’s no question that whether influence or simple similarity, Patrick Rothfuss has created a character and a story that both are very much all his own. His world is a fairly standard fantasy landscape in trouble: the roads aren’t safe, war and the rumor of war are on everyone’s mind and tongue, and demons stalk the landscape. But stories and legends abound, very old and recent alike.

A chronicler of such stories is following rumors of one Kvothe[1] the Bloodless, Kvothe Kingkiller. He finds trouble on the road and yes, demons, but he also seems to have found what he is looking for in the guise of a small-town innkeeper. And to even his own surprise, Kvothe agrees to have his story told, if it be told exactly as he tells it, with neither embellishments nor redactions. Of course, who but Kvothe himself is to say how true the story really is, but as it involves magic, demons, dragons, and still more stories of the world underlying his own tale, it makes for a worthy read.

Well, okay, lots of terribly unworthy reads have those things too, but Rothfuss’ premiere work has, as I’ve already implied, an excellent voice telling it. This is the rare work in which the prose and plot are of equally high measure. It also has an entertaining mythology, an engagable and interesting take on magic, and, regardless of Kvothe’s veracity, a great deal of truth to it. The best of the book, though, is Kvothe himself. Unreliable narration has been a pretty sure guarantor of my enjoyment of a book for some time now, but The Name of the Wind is all the more interesting for alternating between Kvothe’s tale and the room in which he tells it, where we can see him through eyes other than his own. He contains in him the heroism he claims, the boundless sense of duty he may not even wholly be aware of, and unplumbed depths of bitter anger that appear whenever the world does not really conform to his liking. Despite how pleasantly entertaining he comes off in the story, an event during its telling that lasted for a mere page told me far more about him than anything he actually said. And this is exactly the kind of thing I love to read about. I suspect it may have to do with my hobbyist interest in psychology? In any event, my only warning and the only complaint I have about the book at all is my lack of clue about when the first sequel will be published.

[1] “Pronounced very nearly the same as Quothe”