The Wise Man's Fear

 "The Wise Man's Fear" is the second in what is supposed to be a trilogy(though I'm starting to have doubts as to how he can possibly conclude it with only one book).

 This one is much like his first, "The Name of the Wind".  Except it is really damn long.  1126 pages long.

  First, I did enjoy the book.  Rothfuss is a very solid writer, this ant no hack.  He is great a stringing together a sentence, but I'm starting to wonder if he can actually string a full story together.

 Why?

  Well for one, the first 400 pages are a retreat of the first novel.  More Kvothe at University, nothing really new going on here.

 Finally Kvothe leaves the University, he travels 1000 miles(somehow in only 16 days with a shipwreck, eh?) to a distant city where he enters the service of some high and mighty dude.  Denna shows up yet again.  Kvothe pines after her.  Hey this sounding familiar?

 Finally about half way through the book, Kvothe yells at Denna, and is promptly sent out on a mission to eliminate some bandits.


 I should add, that each time Kvothe travels to a new location, the story becomes interesting.. for a time.  But each time Rothfuss overstays, and the reader becomes deadly bored with the location, hoping each time a new chapter arrives that Kvothe will move on.  Kvothe always manages to stay longer than I care for, making me wish they had cut quite a few chapters.

 There is one horrible part where Kvothe enters the fae realm, I kept assuming it would end.. but chapter after chapter Kvothe somehow remained in this most intolerably dull location.

 It does pick up some at the end, Kvothe learns to fight, saves some girls, stuff actually happens, etc.  Why couldn't more of the book been like that?


8.8/10

The Name of the Wind

 The Name of the Wind was Patrick Rothfuss's debut novel, and it received all kinds of attention when it was released.  Numerous awards too.

 The story centers around Kvothe, and is primarily told in first person from his perspective, although there is a section at the begging written in third person.  As the story begins, Kvothe is an old man, and apparently regarded as a hero, or at least in his own mind.

  The initial section, written in third person is somewhat slow, but once Kvothe begins to recount the story of how he came to be a hero, everything picks up and the novel really shows its strength.
 We follow Kvothe from his days a street entertainer, to his time at a university, although as this is just the first of what is likely to be a trilogy, this novel doesn't go much past that.

 Kvothe is an entertaining narrator, a touch arrogant perhaps, but he seems more capable than most.

 As a single novel this is good read, although it lacks much in the way of conclusion, so until the rest of the story is available, it is hard to judge it fully.  The quality of the writing is fairly high, Rothfuss seems to have spent a great deal of time trimming and perfecting the prose.

9.1/10