The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss was a book I had never planned on picking up because of the delay in book three. I did not want another GRRM situation. However, I did end up reading it in the spring of 2020 after people kept wearing me down to give it my take. If you have ever noticed on Twitter, I do give this book a hard time. Those that have read it may just want to jump to the spoiler section further below. I will do my general review first like always.
The first thing I want to say is the story is first person PoV and he does well with it. Not as good as Hobb, but good. The next is that Rothfuss is a King of prose. If you just love beautiful writing than he is tough to beat in my opinion. Of course, saying that it is not a big thing for me. I appreciate it, but I do not need it for me to enjoy a book. What’s worse is if the writer tries too hard making it sound ridiculous, but I do appreciate the ability to do it at a high level. The book delivers here.
The magic system is interesting. Do I love it? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes. I still would like to learn more about magic in this world as it caught my curiosity which is always a must for a fantasy series. There is even a magical school to help the reader learn the basics along with the character. The magic school thing can be helpful in this aspect in fantasy novels.
The Lore setups and some bits were fascinating. I was into learning about this world, its past, and solving the mysteries that happened at the beginnings of the book. Of course, creating interesting lore is one thing, but where Rothfuss went wrong in my opinion is not letting it flow through the novel and helping us learn more about the world we are in. There were stretches where I just felt like I needed more knowledge by now and instead felt like I was getting a lot of filler for Kvothe to be awesome in his own story. Which everyone likes to embellish their own story.
Let’s talk about Kvothe more. I think my biggest issue with this book is I do not like him that much. I do not trust his PoV. I do not like how many people around him seem like NPCs in him telling the story. The only characters he really notices are women he is attracted to in the broad range of his surroundings. There are interesting single characters though. Auri is a pretty cool character that felt underused. The main antagonist is pretty straight forward, not much unique about him, you will despise him though. The best parts of his school encounters are Elodin, and Kilvin. One is just a trip and the other is someone you want in your corner teaching you. Then there is also his love interest which I do not want to get into much in this section. She is also an interesting character to say the least, but again I feel blinded by Kvothe’s PoV of her. It feels a bit exhausting at times. He has friends, but honestly, they felt like window dressing and I barely recall anything about them.
The story itself felt like Rothfuss had a setup that I enjoyed very much until Kvothe set out on his main journey. Then, well, it seemed like Rothfuss got horny while writing this. This led him to focus on Kvothe being awesome and on beautiful girls. I do not know how else to put it. While the first 1/3 of the book had me hooked; the last 2/3 of the book bored me much of the time. The only moments I got back into it was some of the magic and the blue flame section. However, those things didn’t feel like they flowed into the story naturally to me. I was waiting to learn more about the bigger picture, but it seemed to only happen when like Rothfuss was like crap, need to move away from the pretty girls and Kvothe being awesome to build my world more. I do not mean to rag on this so much, but I see the potential for this world, and it feels a bit like he took this for granted.
Honestly my favorite parts of character interactions were in the breaks to Kvothe in his current life. What was happening there was more interesting than the story he was telling “us” for most of the book. There were certainly machinations at work in the present that are tied to his past. It seemed quite interesting, but incomplete as we didn’t learn enough about the world to fully appreciate what may be happening there.
I mean people love this book and I can understand why. I am curious enough about the world to give book 2 a try if Rothfuss ever gets book 3 out. This is one of those books that I would not recommend or dissuade someone from reading. When someone picks it up I honestly am not sure how they will react to it. So, choose for yourself and I am always fascinated by takes on it.
SPOILER SECTION
I just want to say to those who love this is that I do not hate the book but am more disappointed at what it could have done better. The best part of everything in my opinion are the Chandrian & Taborlin the Great. The mystery of Taborlin and the Chandrian murdering Kvothe’s family because of a song had me hooked. The tales about that lore and Kvothe surviving as a street rat had me all in where I thought I would stay. Then he leaves and we meet Denna who almost felt like kryptonite to this story. She weakened the main thread of Kvothe and his motivation to discover more about magic along with the Chandrian. Anytime she was the focus or around I felt frustrated at Kvothe’s obsession with her.
To put it simply I do not like her much when it came to Kvothe's character and felt like there was going to be quite a bit more to her backstory that just never came in this book. I think if I saw her PoV and got to know her away from Kvothe’s PoV she would be a fascinating character. Again, I did enjoy their time dealing with the massacre and blue flame. I needed more of stuff like that. I also enjoyed the musical angle of these two working in harmony together. I think they could make an interesting duo if fleshed out better.
The magic school was a blessing and a curse. The whole library arc felt like it bogged down the story and became quit annoying to deal with. A school library should not be that much of a hassle and block to helping the reader learn more. For how awesome Kvothe is, he brings a damn lit match around old books. I didn’t buy that at all. It felt contrived to restrict knowledge in the story. There are more interesting ways to do that. It also seemed a way to help start his rivalry with the douchebag Lordling trope Ambrose. I do not mind this trope actually as its based in reality and if Ambrose wasn’t such a tool it would make it even harder to deal with Kvothe as the protagonist. I also felt like Kvothe was like a super student and could even make his teachers look foolish whenever he wanted. It seemed pretty easy for him to outwit older more experience people. As far as Ambrose, I’m not sure where all that is going, but that school really sucks at keeping the peace with their students.
There are aspects of this book I enjoy, especially his interactions with teachers, it just seems that Kvothe is either lying about how good he was in school or Rothfuss made him too good to relate to. Though I think when he jumps out of the window it was quite satisfying to seem him “fall” like that. I’m sure there are parts here and there I ‘ve forgotten about now, but I felt the story to be unplanned and erratic at times. I also cannot say it more, I do not relate to Kvothe, he is boring. Almost like Rey in Star Wars. The character is just not interesting to me & I need more of a struggle to be a hero and to learn things in his journey.
The hope I have is the cutscenes of the present. Now Kvothe aka Kote seems interesting, and something happened to make him go into anonymity. Although Bast steals the scenes he is in and enjoy him quite a bit. Though I swear to God if anonymity is just a brilliant strategy on Kvothe’s part I will smash my head against a wall. There seems to be some intriguing machinations happening in the world that I also want to know more about, but first I need to learn more from his past! Can you tell this book frustrates me?
Overall, I think Rothfuss could do some special things if he had it all together and of course he does have real life issues that he has had to deal with. He is talented in many aspects. I do hope him well and to continue his writing.