Patrick Rothfuss

The Kingkiller Chronicle — (2007-2009) This will eventually be a trilogy. Publisher: My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as "quothe." Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I've had more names than anyone has a right to. The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it's spoken, can mean The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree. "The Flame" is obvious if you've ever seen me. I have red hair, bright. If I had been born a couple of hundred years ago I would probably have been burned as a demon. I keep it short but it's unruly. When left to its own devices, it sticks up and makes me look as if I have been set afire. "The Thunder" I attribute to a strong baritone and a great deal of stage training at an early age. I've never thought of "The Broken Tree" as very significant. Although in retrospect, I suppose it could be considered at least partially prophetic. My first mentor called me E'lir because I was clever and I knew it. My first real lover called me Dulator because she liked the sound of it. I have been called Shadicar, Lightfinger, and Six-String. I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them. But I was brought up as Kvothe. My father once told me it meant "to know." I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned. I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me. So begins the tale of Kvothe-from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But The Name of the Wind is so much more-for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's legend.

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The Name of the Wind: Believable and "honest" writing

There are two main reasons to read The Name of the Wind, as far as I'm concerned. The first reason is the refreshing lack of clichéd elements in the story. There were several times throughout the book when I was reading a scene and anticipating the outcome, yet Patrick Rothfuss surprised me by veering away from where the typical novel would have gone and instead wrote something completely unexpected. I'm not talking about anything bizarre here, or plot twists for the sake of plot twists; I'm talking about the author actually thinking for himself rather than have his characters doing the same old things as is so typical in other stories. I'd give examples, but I'm afraid they would all be spoilers to one degree or another. But the effect of this is to make the book very honest. I think Rothfuss wrote from a very personal place and drew upon his own life experiences to create this, rather than drawing on other people's works for most of the inspiration.

The second thing that really hooked me was how well Rothfuss describes—well, nearly everything. I don't mean that the book is drowning in detail, but the detail that is there is beautifully described and very real. Rothfuss writes like someone who knows what it is he is talking about. And that is such a rare thing in authors. Too many times I've read a scene in a novel and known that the author really had no clue what he was talking about. That's not the case here.

One example is the music. The main character in The Name Of The Wind plays a musical instrument and the way that his thoughts and playing are described had me utterly convinced that Rothfuss was a great musician himself. (I should add that I taught music for years and have also played several instruments in many settings, so this is something I know about.) And yet, Rothfuss doesn't play anything himself! To be able to describe something in such believable terms and detail so as to convince someone who is intimately involved in that thing is simply brilliant. I don't think I've ever come across it done nearly so well.

These two aspects of the book, even apart from the absorbing plot, place The Name of the Wind head and shoulders above pretty much everything else I've read in the last 25 years.   —M.P.   Comments

The Name of the Wind: We should have a 6th star exclusively for books like this

Due to the mediocrity that the fantasy genre has been tending towards lately, I most times shy away from a lot of the more recent, big door-stopper, ever-lasting epics.

Then, every few years, a book like The Name of the Wind comes along and reminds me of why I love fantasy to start with.

To me, when fantasy is written well, you almost believe it, like it's some big historic narrative of a forgotten legend, all dust-covered, yellow-paged, and long-lost among other gargantuan tomes on a shadowy, back-wall-book-shelf in the basement of a monstrous and aging library. The prose, language, setting, creatures, and characters all come together and take you to a place so fantastic it can't be real, but you almost feel like you're really there anyway.

If you could just simply time-travel inter-dimensionally, you really could be sipping an evening ale at a table in the Waystone Inn and wondering why the warm fire in the hearth isn't making you feel as cozy as it did before the man you know as Kote, but is really Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as Quothe) started telling his story. 

That's how a fantasy was intended to make you feel, and that's the way Mr. Rothfuss tells his tale.  —G.H.   Comments

The Name of the Wind

You know how sometimes a book, or a movie, or a concert gets so hyped up in the press and you have such high expectations that when you finally get around to reading/seeing it, it disappoints? That's what I was worried might happen when I decided to read The Name of the Wind. I purposely came to it late, hoping to wait until Patrick Rothfuss was nearly finished with the trilogy before I starting it. But, the book has received so much attention that it became inexcusable for me, as the editor of this website, not to read it. So I did — in two days. (It's a huge book.)

And I'm very happy to report that The Name of the Wind did not disappoint — I was completely enthralled. The pace was quick and never lagged. The plot was tight and had just the right amount of mystery — I always understood what was going on, but Rothfuss regularly added new elements, twists, and layers to keep me wondering where this was going and what would happen next. In fact, by the end of the book, there are more unanswered questions than answered ones. Throughout, the writing style was smooth and pleasant, with enough wit, humor, foreshadowing, and artistry to be intellectually stimulating, but never pretentious. Furthermore, the magic system in Rothfuss's world is thoroughly explained to us, bit by bit, and it is complicated and makes sense.

Perhaps most important, Mr Rothfuss writes excellent characters. I especially appreciated what he did with his hero. Kvothe's circumstances are familiar; he's an exceptionally bright kid whose parents are killed by something evil, nobody cares for him, he manages to get into magic school on long odds, he has trouble fitting in with both students and teachers, he makes two close friends and one rich and handsome enemy from a powerful family, he's obsessed with finding out about the evil people who killed his parents, he regularly gets punished for his exploits at school, he has no clue about girls, and he actually meets one who lives in the pipes under the school .... Hmmm... This does sound familiar.

But I'll bet that most people who read The Name of the Wind never thought of Harry Potter, because Kvothe and his world are new and refreshing. Kvothe is a product of his liberal education and a lot of time spent trying to survive on his own as a beggar. Sometimes he is selfish, sometimes he is cruel, sometimes he does the right thing. At one point in the book, while Kvothe was living on the streets, he had an opportunity to help someone in distress (a particular distress that Kvothe himself had experienced). I was nervous — worried that Rothfuss would ruin his careful characterization by having Kvothe perform a heroic deed too soon. But, no, Kvothe pulled a Kitty Genovese, which gave me a deeper respect for Mr Rothfuss. During Kvothe's maturation, we see him make more right choices and fewer wrong ones, but he is complex and inconsistent enough to make us lack confidence that he's going to turn out okay. And that makes for a very interesting story.

I'm very much looking forward to continuing this mystery next April; so much so that I'll pre-order the hardback of The Wise Man's Fear (something I rarely do). Patrick Rothfuss is a much-needed bright young star in the fantasy field. Let's hope that he can keep it up!  —K.H.   Comments

The Name of the Wind

This is without a doubt the best first fantasy book by an author that I have ever read. I will not bother to summarize the plot herein, as that has been done by other reviewers on this site and by the publisher’s blurb above. Rather, it is important to note what Patrick Rothfuss has done. He has really and truly started to tell a story. I don’t mean just any story, but a story from the days where people didn’t read, and sat around fires at night with children paying rapt attention to the words that would drip like honey off the tongue of the story-teller. This is where Rothfuss’ success lies.

The Name of the Wind is a wonderful book, and it is, hopefully, the first of many for the newcomer Rothfuss. His style is elegant in its simplicity, lending itself to easy readability. His plot, namely a coming-of-age autobiography (at least so far) unfolds with ease and is not the complex, multiple character point-of-view epic to which I am accustomed (a la Martin, Erikson, and Wurts). It is a single point of view almost entirely throughout the book, except for very brief interludes, and this is a really refreshing change for a fantasy novel, and for novels in general. Beyond this, the story is told in the first person, as related by the main character, Kvothe, from the Waystone Inn. The last time I read the first person story-telling style being pulled off this well was when I read Huckleberry Finn in high school. I also really liked the short chapters, as that made the book easier to read. Long chapters without logical breaks are a pet peeve of mine.

Rothfuss switches easily from the first person to the third person when flipping back to the book’s “present” at the Waystone Inn, and, even more importantly, the character of Kvothe draws you in, and you see him grow. You see him make mistakes that a young man would likely make, and there is a palpable sense that Kvothe is a real person. The story itself actually has a lot of the fantasy stalwarts: the big evil (the Chandrian), a kindly wizard (arcanist, actually), the young lad bereft of parents (Kvothe) at an early age, and a love interest. What is different about this book is what Rothfuss does with them. It is like he has re-written the standard fantasy fare, and has renewed it. He took the clichés, and used them in a new way, and made it real. I particularly liked the use of humour and the legends used to explain some of the background to the story. There is also some lovely foreshadowing in the book’s “present” at the Waystone Inn. Rothfuss speaks knowingly of music. Rothfuss really “gets” the importance of music to a musician, and how it constantly calls and beckons, which, as I am a musician myself, I really appreciated.

My complaints are few, but they exist. They will likely be dealt with in the fullness of time, as Rothfuss matures as a writer (I’ll let you know next April, when The Wise Man's Fear comes out). Firstly, this is not a trilogy, and it should not have been published as one. It is very similar in structure to The Lord of the Rings, which although it had three volumes, was really just one story. The Kingkiller Chronicle is just such a story, and the reader is left dangling a bit, through no fault of the author, at the end of The Name of the Wind. It is not a cliffhanger, but more like the story stops, or has an interlude. To put two years between the publication of the first and second books is a bit unfair to the readers. Secondly, I get that Kvothe is poor, but this point is hammered at a bit too much in the latter half of the book. Thirdly, I found Kvothe’s interactions with women, and in particular, Denna (the love interest) a little unrealistic. Kvothe is a charming character, and can’t quite seem to make the leap to romance. However, to be fair, he is young in this book, and his life has been quite traumatic. Still, this point is deserving of particular attention. Fourthly, I was expecting more background development by the end of almost 700 pages, and I didn’t get it. Virtually nothing on the Chandrian, or the other evils noted near the beginning of the book, or in its middle. If I don’t get that in The Wise Man’s Fear, a whole star is coming off, and I mean that. The bones need some meat on them.

However, despite these faults, which are really quite minor, this is a book that I would recommend to just about anyone, even a fantasy newbie. It is very, very easy to read. There is virtually no sex, so younger teens could read it, and the violence, though present and detailed, is appropriate to the story. There is nothing gratuitous in this regard. This book gets four stars, and I expect the subsequent volumes to do better. Mr. Rothfuss has created some great expectations, and it is possible, just possible, that the Waystone Inn might join the likes of The Green Dragon and the other great inns and taverns of fantasy literature.  —A.B.   Comments

The Name of the Wind

Here's the link for a review of The Name of the Wind that Rob wrote for Blackgate Magazine (copyrighted).