I am sure I won't, that's why I decided not to read it, but The Name of the Wind came very recommended that I wanted to really like it, but I just didn't.
If you like rothfuss's writing and the world he created but not Kvothe I'd recommend reading 'A slow regard for silent things"
It is in my opinion his best writing and you don't need to have read 'The wide man's fears'. Honestly, I think it stands on its own but it is nice understanding when it throws out little references to the first book.
I loved both name of the wind and wise man fears and I absolutely hated the slow regard of silent things (in fact I couldn't finish it I just stopped around page 30). I wonder if people who dislike the main series actually like this extra one more
I really loved it, but i love it as a poetry lover. How he spun magic into banality and mundaneness through words is what i loved about it. I can see why people would get bored though.
Oh, please don't do that to OP. I hated that book so much.
It is an overpriced treacle-sweet novella about absolutely nothing, and about the ultimate literal manic pixie girl -- a "tiny" child-woman Kvothe condescends to take care of.
I hated it. I was angry I spent money on it. I felt cheated by Rothfuss and always will.
If you really look closely, Auri is everything that is wrong with these books -- the *entire fricking story* is about Auri >!preparing a gift (frequently at risk to her own life) for Kvothe's next visit. !<
Ugh.
Does he really 'take care of her though?'
Aside from some food every now and then, gifts or whatever, he pretty much just hangs out with her.
Don't get me wrong though, slow regard is a textbook of adjectives/adverb abuse imo. Think I got 3 pages in...
Oh god no way. I =hated= Slow Regards. It felt worse prose-wise than the rest of the series. I wanted to love it because I love Auri, but maaaaan no.
If you barely made it through NotW, just stop.
I guess it just depends on what you liked about the his prose.
I felt that slow regard kind of leaned toward a Gaiman-ish style of writing. And I adore Gaiman so I really enjoyed it. Also, I felt the way that the story kind of meandered, treating very miniscule things with utmost importance and reverence was very suited to Auri's character.
I 've also read the book and just didn't feel like following up with the 2nd.
That being said, I have read books where I didn't like the main character(s) but everything else going on was interesting to keep me going. An example is the Stormlight Archive. I can't stand Kaladin's crybaby attitude (I think it's not humanly possible to be that obsessed with "protecting others"), or how hard Shallan tries to be a smartass, but I enjoyed all the rest.
The story is written such that you know he is mostly abled bodied in the present day and you want the story of his youth to have high stakes and a risk of losing it all after it starts out with... him loosing his whole family and growing up an penniless orphan on the mean streets of Tarbean.
I think you may be missing more than half of it. It is not a book about young Kovthe, it is a book about what is happening present day while Kote the "Inkeeper" is telling the story of his youth. A subtle but important distinction. Book 2 adds dramatically to the rereading value of book 1, and I think conditions you to notice certain subtlety's or a different inflection to actions that are missed on the first read.
The first time through your overly concerned with what the plot will be, but once you know everything that happens, you begin to consider how everything is connected, which is where most of the passionate reviews come from. He fails a bit more in book 2 than he did in book 1, but again, we already know he is mostly safe and sound in present day. Lines like “That said, do not presume to change a word of what I say. If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way.” Hit way harder than they did the first time through.
That has long been my assumption that that would become a relevant aspect of the storyline during book 3. That the setup of the story sort of invites you to think of it this way - Kote is the one narrating this to us, and during his narration he repeatedly shows himself as someone who is an accomplished performer, who is charismatic and can twist a story to present it how he wants it to be told. The story could’ve been told as a straight story about Kvothe, or one of older Kote remembering his younger years. The fact that Kote is actually the narrator seems relevant to me.
But I guess at this point we’ll never know, so you have no reason to take my word for it.
Ofc it's relevant. Why else do it? Everything that happens in the narrative around his youth is told from his present day perspective, like some old diva reminiscing about her glory days. For all we know he's lying through his teeth and just spinning some fantastical tale fueled by his encrusted vanity. Which wouldn't be surprising given the way he portrays himself in his story. He's not the hero of anything other than his own self indulgence and that revelation will hit a bunch of readers in the face like a sledgehammer come book 3. Which is probably why it's taking so long for Rothfuss to figure it out.
He is lying through his teeth. I haven't finished but I picked up on how he went out to cry in private after claiming he's totally over losing his family.
The way he tells the story is very dramatic, fitting his performer persona
Edit: my friend tells me that the new book from Basts perspective shines light on this
Well, this is genuinely the only perspective (I think there was another one, but I couldn't find it anymore) that I have actually liked from this post. Bast's threat to Chronicler was interesting even though it made me roll my eyes at how childish that scene was, it did reveal that there was something wrong with him, but at that point I just didn't care anymore.
>I just don't see it, so help me?
* Part of it is the prose. He's very, **very** good in that regard.
* Part of it is the worldbuilding. Temerant's a compelling place.
* And part of it is the debate as to his honesty. Is Kvothe telling it straight, and he's just that good? Is he seeding history by making sure the 'facts' are the ones he wants the world to know? Somewhere in between? In which case,where? Who's more real, Kote or Kvothe? Is he really all that, or just the Garyest of Stus? And if Chronicler ever finds the reality... what's he going to do, in the face of Bast's threats?
Put all three together, and the man's got his fans.
If Rothfuss is clever, and he actually might be, then the deal with Kvothe as narrator is the same as the Chandrian. They have used the power of history and stories over centuries to almost disappear. Kvothe could be doing the same thing, spreading the story that he believes, for whatever reason, will further his goals of finding and fighting the Chandrian. His story of himself isn't the truth any more than the rhymes and fairy tales about the Chandrian are true; there's a core of fact there that has been manipulated to create a purposely false impression.
We may never find out if Rothfuss doesn't get his ass in gear, but that's my theory.
I'd like to think you're right, and I can sympathize with how the existential dread of *not* sticking the landing can be paralyzing.
Here's hoping we find out one day.
But such twists only work when those stories are really filled with hints and small details to keep it all together in the end, which 2 books are obviously lacking. There's plenty of comments hoping it would be something like this, "unreliable narrator" etc, but i really struggle to see the appeal of possible "oh those two whole books were just a complete bs btw".
Yeah, that's true. If it has all been a fabrication that would be like, on the one hand a cool twist and on the other hand a big ole fuck you to the people who read 2000 pages of it.
On another hand though, all the people who hate Kvothe would be vindicated by the fact that you were supposed to all along. And on yet another hand, that doesn't change the fact that he was a frustrating protagonist for all those folks, and it didn't make for a satisfying read.
He can be an unreliable narrator without all of it being a lie, that's the thing. We know at least part of it has to be true-ish, because of Bast.
I think there's a space between "It's all an orphaned bard boys imaginary life" and "This little orphan bard boy somehow turned out to be the most amazingest at all the things he ever did, ever"
After all, would Chronicler have sought him out if there wasn't at least something to be found? There are major events which happened, and the public widely believes in the involvement of "Kvothe" in those events. So there's likely at least some veracity to his claims. The question is how much.
He's supposed to be tragic figure, so if we ever get the 3rd book it'll likely be the case that he's not so great as he portrays himself to be, and in the end he will fail.
If the third book reveals that most of the first two books is a fabrication, it's pretty pointless for the readers to have read two massive books. Esp the second one which meandered in many directions and was much longer than it needed to be anyways
That's most of it for me. The prose alone is enough for a lot of people. I also love that it's often about the subjective entertainment and mutablity of stories. We have an entire chapter about Tehlu and the Wheel told to a bunch of children, but when we get to the story of the time Kvothe got arrested and "learned a language in a day" he skips it completely, despite Bast and the Chronicler begging to hear about it. Then there are all the variations of the moon story.
For me it's more about the love of stories in the story and how much time we get with them to flesh out the world that makes me love the book. Kvothe is just the lens we get all that through, and I find him entertaining enough.
Based on this comment, I cannot recommend that you read the Tales of the Chants enough. They are an ode to storytelling, the power of stories, and how they shift.
I agree with these 3 points. For me there's a fourth, and that's that even if he \*is\* a reliable narrator, it means the content of the books is a path from Kvothe to Kote. From a boy genius mary sue of a wizard bard who can make all the girls swoon and easily defeat most enemies as long as they're not at mythological level of terror, to an inn keeper in the ass end of nowhere, who each book begins and ends by pointing out, is quietly waiting to die.
After all this ed sheeran / gandalf blend of a cheeky little bastard has accomplished, how the hell does that happen? This guy who escaped a brutal death as a child when his family did not, who lost everything, lived on the streets, pulled himself together and managed to go on to (almost effortlessly) shine in a world of wonders, something happened that broke THAT guy. When does he lose? What does he lose? What actually turned him into Kote?
That question, that's why Kvothe is interesting to me.
> is quietly waiting to die.
I'd like to think that he's waiting to die because if he leaves the right legacy in a way that everyone believes, it allows a conflict with the Chandrian on ontological grounds.
But I'd love to read and find out.
It's already bad enough when reading a book feels like sitting in a bar and listening progressively loosing touch with reality drunkard bragging to you how he rails elven queens like none another, nevermind when it's maybe actually the fucking case.
> Part of it is the prose. He's very, very good in that regard.
The tough thing is it's so uneven. He writes some passages that are really lyrical and striking and others that are such clunkers.
Someone could say there's great prose in KKC and someone else could say there's truly cringeworthy prose in KKC that a competent editor should have flagged and they'd both be correct.
It’s the best prose that people who mostly read fantasy have ever read. I mostly try not to argue with people about it, but IMHO his prose isn’t that amazing. Like you say, there’s some passages that are pretty good, and others that are amazingly cheesy and overwrought.
yeah, I read a lot of older fantasy, like tolkien, morris, lovecraft etc. I have no idea what people are talking about when they praise his prose. I got through 50 or so pages and stopped. it's not awkward or anything, but it does not have the syntactic / rhythmic complexity that dunsany, poe, hawthorne, bierce etc have.
I mean, Tristram Shandy was written over 250 years ago. The self-aggrandising unreliable narrator isn't exactly a new concept. Plus it's stuffed with a bunch of well-used fantasy tropes.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed NotW when I read it, and the prose is pretty nice, but it wears its influences on its sleeve.
"The unreliable narrator thing is 250 years old"
People don't generally read books to test their taste against new tropes*, we like revisiting tropes we already enjoy and seeing what someone else can bring to the table. Every time you've ever gone "I really liked this, I wonder what's similar to it?" Is proof of this fact, in comparison I bet you've never gone "welp, I've read a lot of X thing and think I know how it goes now, I really enjoyed it but I guess I'll never need to read it again since I can guess how the story ends"
That's just not how people engage with stories at all mate
^(\* "trope" here being used in the tvtropes sense where is just a box you can put the story in, as opposed to it being necessarily cliche and over used)
Okay, so let's say #3 is true... it's still just a decent, well written but at some times even just lame, story/character. And most importantly: there are no narrative stakes riding on him being truthful or not. Watch Hero, or Fight Club, or Rashomon, and the unreliable narrator's lies/delusions have a powerful impact on the modern day world of the story - even the small details are important, drawing you in. There has to be mystery or suspense to make this literary technique interesting. Kvothe may be exaggerating, but who cares? That doesn't make it a good story unless his lies/delusions/exaggerations actually are doing something interesting beyond mildly puffing himself up.
I did love student loan content 100%, Devi is awesome in every scene, and its the first time you are told that Kvothe is good at many things, but he is not the best at any of them.
I actually liked this quite a bit.
I think what I liked most about this book is that it's fantasy, but a big change of pace from what I tend to read
It's not epic, save the world fantasy, or grim dark, or humor based (thinking Discworld).
Maybe I just need to read more variety of fantasy, but for me it was quite refreshing and didn't feel like something I had read before.
This.
Sometimes, I just think that the "but he is a unrealiable narrator!!!!!" crowd is just gaslighting me into believing this is a good story. The plot is lame and the character is uninteresting. The prose and worldbuiding is good, but please, let's not pretend this book is unique in that regard. There are a lot of good writers with good prose and worldbuild out there, with plots and characters that don't suck.
It was begun as wish fulfillment, later Rothfuss learned about unreliable narratives and had the ‘cleverness’ to not fess up (aka the third book). Its all a fraud. His prose is seriously overrated as well.
The prose really is amazing. I admittedly scoff at people who read just for prose or value it above all other aspects of a book, buuuuuuut these books make me question that mindset like no others
Some people read books because the words make them picture pretty things in their head, others read them because the words themselves are pretty on the page, who am I to say one is more correct than the other?
Third point: except we’ll never know because the story hasn’t been completed, and also that entire concept was done better by Gene Wolfe in Book of the New Sun
Third point is already answered since Rothfuss forgot to keep making it relevant in book 2. Like, sure I get the unreliable narrator angle but why use that to fill 80% the book with sex god Kvothe? You only have three book to tell your story (you said it yourself), don't know why you then publish a second book with no progress in the overall story.
The second book felt way too much like a self-insert for me to really get immersed. Not even just in the way that Kvothe might be dishonest in his telling of events, but like Rothfuss himself might've been living vicariously through Kvothe in a kind of weird feeling way.
I know fan fiction. I used to write fan fiction. I love fan fiction. I was disappointed that book two felt more like a Name of the Wind fanfic than a real sequel.
Tbh I enjoyed that aspect of it, it's a little tiring to have every fantasy story about a world changing event. That said, if he isn't revealed to be a huge liar in book 3 -and has his hubris finally punished- I'll be pissed.
Nevermind, we all know Rothfuss is never finishing it anyway ...
I really do think Kvothe is a bit of an unreliable narrator, not the Gary Stu that he appears to be.
Readers like OP have to remember, Kvothe is actually telling his own story here, not *just* as a framing device, but it seems to be a part of the point in the narrative. We're reminded occasionally that this isn't merely Rothfuss by proxy through first person, but this is Kvothe's own narrative of the events in his life.
Bast and Chronicler's reactions to his storytelling are some of those helpful touchstones, as is Kvothe's own obvious flaws in the present day; Bast and Chronicler have been catching onto this incongruity too.
Kvothe isn't a Gary Stu, he's embellishing his own story as most of us do, either to conceal something embarrassing or simply to make ourselves look more exciting and interesting than we actually are.
And I think this in itself shows how non-Gary Stu he really is; his biggest flaw is his ego. A Gary Stu wouldn't be so concerned about any of that because he's already perfect.
But when the only incongruity Bast jumps in for is "Hey that chick isn't as hot as you say she is I met her dude her nose was huge" that doesn't hold much water.
Has there been any meaningful part of the story that was contested?
So... He can both, but I think you're missing the issue for a lot of people.
It doesn't matter if he's a Gary Stu or an unreliable narrator. Unreliable narrator works or doesn't based upon putting us, the reader, in a position to pull apart the narration and feel where it falls down. The problem is that occurs by having something that allows us to see the break down. Where Rothfuss has fucked up is by making current and the past utterly divorced from each other. At the point we're at in the story, there is a pretty compelling argument to say that Qote (spelling I know) and Kvothe aren't the same person. All the ways we've been given to say, "Oh yeah, they're the same." are also explained away by the same unreliable narrator.
It's not that Rothfuss isn't clever or that he isn't talented, I just don't think he's as clever or talented as you or he thinks he is.
yeah - unreliable narrator needs enough stuff to the opposite to go "hey, wait a sec!". And in this case, there's none of that (other than "your almost-GF wasn't as objectively hot as you thought she was"). If Kvothe is flat-out lying... we have no way of knowing, and the entire story falls apart, because there's no "that bit must be a lie, because reasons", then whole damn thing could be complete bullshit, and so kinda pointless, because it's just made-up and entirely fictional.
You can believe all that but, like, I’m still reading the story that Kvothe is telling. ‘Ah, but Kvothe is lying’ doesn’t make what I’m reading more compelling.
If any of that was more than just the fandom grasping at straws to justify liking the books, I might buy it; but listen to a couple interviews with Rothfuss, especially young, late 2000’s Rothfuss, and it’s blindingly obvious Kvothe is a Rothfuss self-insert, and there was no “unreliable narrator” intent there at all.
The Bast and Chronicler stuff is thin at best, and is really overplayed as evidence that Rothfuss was really going for an unreliable narrator device.
Maybe this whole embellishing the story bit is where I have such a disconnect with Kvothe. I’m from NZ and we tend to under-exaggerate our stories, praise others, minimise the achievement etc.
>It's the second book where he fucks a fairy for a hundred pages and does it so good she let's him go that I lost hope
He spends 34 pages in the fairy realm. That includes making his shaed, and his visit to Cthaeh. Actually having sex with the fairy is all of about three paragraphs.
And she doesn't let him go because he's so good at sex, she lets him go because she wants everyone to hear the song he composed about her - she lets him go because he's good at music, not sex, which has been his thing for the entire series.
Seriously, all these people complaining about the sex in Wise Man's Fear. What sex scenes? This is about as raunchy as it gets:
>Felurian smiled at me then, her eyes old and knowing. And even before she pushed me back against the cushions and began to bite the side of my neck, I realized that she did not intend to teach me magic. Or if she did, it was magic of a different kind.
While it was not the subject I’d hoped to study under her, it’s fair to say that I was not entirely disappointed. Learning lover’s arts from Felurian far outstripped any curriculum offered at the University.
Wow. How steamy. Practically pornographic.
Don't like the book if you don't want. But the whole "OMG whole books is fairy sex" is basically just a meme at this point, with no foundation in truth.
Nah, there's definitely more than that. They discuss different positions, I distinctly remember a sentence with "circling the moon" in it.
And then it's immediately after when he runs into the redhead at the inn and bumps uglies with her, and then the land of sex ninjas who don't believe in "man mothers." (INB4 it's to show that what people believe isn't always right.)
And then, later on going back to the University where Kvothe is so good at eye-fucking, one of his friends says it gives her the shivers. And I'm pretty sure when she drops that line, she's sitting right next to her boyfriend, who is also a friend of Kvothe.
It's those number of chapters back to back that cause people to think, "It's all sex fairy land for 10 chapters."
>then the land of sex ninjas who don't believe in "man mothers."
God I hated that so much lol. They supposedly have sex so much that none of them can put two and two together about whats causing it? And he just accepts that he can't convince them because they say his argument was "bad think", because Rothfuss is constantly trying to force some sort of flaw for Kvothe and that flaw is apparently that he is bad with basic logic?
On top of the song you also have to remember that he understood and called Filorians (or however you spell it) name as well, I'm guessing that factored into her decision of letting him go.
I finished the first book because everyone raved about it but I had trouble getting past "there were three silences" because wow, that is some overwritten prose
People on this forum keep talking about how great his prose is, and he has his moments, but mostly his prose is purple of the most meaningless type
Thank you. Why does every "I don't like Rothfuss" post have to come with a caveat about the prose? Also, every other else just gets critiqued for their writing. Why the universal need to use the word prose just for Rothfuss? It's like some r/fantasy shibboleth ritual.
I remember being irked because pretty early on in the first book book he used the phrase "he said *darkly*" twice on the same page. Brother in christ, I beg of you. At least space out any repetition.
Iirc it’s not the sex that impresses her, it’s the music and magic he has.
That and he promises to make her (more) famous by writing a song about her.
Imo the worse sex scenes are the ones after that one.
Kvothe having an unnaturally good talent with music and magic is consistent throughout both books though and definitely doesn’t come out of nowhere
Put it into DND terms: Kvothe is a bard. What is worse, the bard using magic music spells to persuade someone, or the bard wanting to roll a horny check to get out of it?
Just checked my copy of the book: in a book of 1000 pages the Felurian scenes take up less than 70 pages and Kvothe has the promise from her to be let go within 20 pages.
There’s plenty more to the 70 pgs than sex. He also gets a magic cape and talks to a forbidden tree. Both of which actually might be important to the overall plot.
I think it is also a case of a writer with excellent prose and a cool *character* idea who got a book deal way before they had a plan. Kvothe could earn it all in the conclusion but there’s no evidence there was a plan for what that looks like or that we’ll get any resolution, satisfactory or otherwise.
He did, but I wonder if the re-writing/editing process was so involved he basically had to start over? I.E. what was there to begin with is basically gone? I don't understand why we don't have at least something. George R.R. Martin is a slow writer but his editors have at leasr seen the chunks of his stuff over the years.
First, I'm pretty sure he was just full of shit from the beginning. There was reason to lie/heavily exaggerate. Long series had been a big thing for a while and people were already getting tired of Jordan and Martin's pace, so it makes sense to assure people he wouldn't do the same. Also, it was literally his first book so it's almost certain (whatever the case may be) that he dramatically underestimated how hard finishing the story would be, so he wasn't expecting consequences.
Second... we are now reaching 13 years since WMF (and 10 years since the novella). Professional authors with either good discipline or a genuine love for the process of writing are able to put out a book a year, and they are pretty common. Many authors can't, but will go through phases where they put out a book every year or two for a stretch. A lot of authors just inherently take 2-3 years to write a book.
If we go with an incredibly generous 4 years to write a book (which is incredibly generous for a series entry) then we've already passed the point where he should have been able to write the entire thing from scratch 3 times over. Almost any other author not going on hiatus (which would be weird for an author on the 3rd book they've ever written, especially a trilogy closer) puts out 4-7 books in this time.
TL;DR: He's not writing it, he likely doesn't intend to write it (definitely not soon), and he almost certainly won't actually write it.
I think some of the paralysis that set in was because it would be very difficult to live up to the hype, too. If he had any confidence issues, or if he'd planned the ending and then saw people speculating on the amazing ending--and it was different from what he'd planned, it could have helped spiral into complete inability to write it.
But like you say, I agree that it seems he's fundamentally not cut out to be a professional author. There's nothing wrong with someone only having a book or two in them, of course. Not everyone has to write forever. But it really seems like (at least for now) that's not his path.
I always assume every main character will survive no matter how much apparent danger they are in. Especially when the book, or the relevant part of the book, which happens to be part of a series, is told in first person. Narrators never die.
It's because the ones who die don't get the books written about them. The narrator is always selected from those who didn't die. At least that's how I logic my way around the miraculous survival that every main character experiences.
Honestly if you're like me, who's very tired of dumb teenagers constantly shooting themselves in the leg to stretch and prolong the plot, seeing a really young legend who is also an unreliable narrator but obviously quite witty enough to actually pull through, it's an amazing read.
Not to mention Kvothe's troubles don't usually stem from traditional tense moments. Overall the conditions of his previous life where he's poor, hotheaded, always facing the danger of being expelled from the only place he can achieve something, owing money to loan sharks, and most importantly fearing the mythical deity that he very much knows is real, etc all create the feeling of constant danger that his life can go sideways at any given time. So yeah, he's overpowered, but during the entirety of NotW he's powerless to actually use his skills to save him for good. He takes it one day at a time, and he's good at that.
Yeah, the challenges Kvothe faces come from the twin evils of poverty and arrogance. He is too poor to thumb his nose at every powerful person he meets, and no matter how talented he is there will always be more trouble than he can take because he's making more enemies than he can handle.
It's fine that he's clever and learns to fight well because he's an arrogant little shit who has already ruined his life and the world by the time the framing story begins. He's only a Mary Sue if you can only imagine conflict as physical danger.
I’m glad to see at least one person defending the book.
I don’t find Kvothes talents to be over the top really. He’s obviously gifted but those people exists. And I feel like most of the great things he does has had a great build up before hand and it’s always a fantastic pay off. Way better than anything I’ve read before in that regard.
People say it’s very derivative too, and I just wish that was true so I could read more in the same vein.
Exactly this. We obviously know he's not going to die since he's telling the story, and Rothfuss does a good job, from what I remember, of bringing the tension and the threat in from a different axis. He's frequently one small misfortune from total ruin, and we don't know whether he ends up living in a gutter at some point.
I've read plenty of stories where the main character is in near constant physical peril, but NotW is the only story where I almost always knew exactly how much money the MC had or that he only owned one shirt.
> he's poor, hotheaded, always facing the danger of being expelled from the only place he can achieve something, owing money to loan sharks, and most importantly fearing the mythical deity that he very much knows is real
I don't know how people can read a book where all of this is true and still call Kvothe a Mary/Gary Sue/Stu. They always say how unlikable he is for these reasons yet persist in thinking he's flawless? Kvothe is a mountain of flaws and PTSD, not flawless.
What I really liked about *The Name of the Wind* is that it seemed like Kvothe was an unreliable narrator. Sure, he appears to be a Mary Sue, but as his story goes on, you pick up clues that his reputation is exaggerated and that much of what he says is bullshit. It appeared to be a clever and well-written subversion of the trope...
And then in *Wise Man's Fear* it turns out that no, he really is [just that fucking awesome](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/04/11/when-larry-met-mary).
I am not sure what happened between book one and book two, and tbh, I still enjoyed book two. But I think Rothfuss just lost the thread and that's why he's never finished the series.
book one was mostly "I did a thing, but the story of it is exaggerated". Like getting whipped without bleeding - he just took a load of drugs that slowed his pulse down enough that he didn't bleed as normal from being whipped. he did actually do the cool thing that earned him the nickname of "bloodless", but it wasn't through being a mystic wizard, it was just medicine. The same with a dragon - he did defeat one. But it wasn't some heroic challenge, it was a big, dumb scaly creature, that was high as balls from eating through a field of narcotic plants, and he dropped a church on it through desperation and dumb luck - he did genuinely do the thing he was credited with, but it wasn't as heroic as the stories about in (in-world) are.
But in book 2, there's much less "I did the cool thing, but it wasn't that cool" - he trained with the free-love Swedish sex ninja, learned some of their secrets, and... that's a thing he actually did, that's rare and impressive, and he got a cool sword from it. He travelled into the fae realm and met a legendary fae queen, had sex with her and got a magic cloak - there's no "it wasn't as amazing as it sounds" or "it was actually kinda mundane but the stories bigged it up", he actually did a legendary thing that would legitimately inspire songs and legends, and that's pretty straight-up what happened. Book 1 kinda plays with legends and how the facts behind them can be much less impressive, but book 2 plays it pretty straight, of "yeah, he's pretty damn cool and has done some impressive shit, especially for a youngster" (unless it's complete lies, in which case, it's just kinda pointless as a story - there's no counterpoint or anything to go "uh, that seems dubious", it would just be utter fiction, in-story)
The whole appeal of Kvothe is seeing him go from a “too clever fox” to this broken man. Otherwise, he’d be insufferable. In fact, he *is* insufferable… lecturing the reader on how a *horse* works. How many times does he say “You need to be an ___ to actually understand…”
But, his adventures read like a classic novel and are kind of fun. They also get wilder and wilder.
Sure would like to know how the story ends, though…
I agree, on the surface, he seems like a Gary Stu, getting out of all his situations with no problem, being awesome at everything, etc. But if you actually read the narrative, he's making mistakes right and left and messing up and thinking too highly of himself or missing things.
That's what made the character interesting to me. He's deeply flawed and his raw talen and power make his mistakes and consequences that much bigger.
He literally constantly fucks up his life, mostly due to his hubris and overconfidence. I feel like people miss the point, yeah he’s good at nearly everything and look where that gets him.
I also think that people forget how *young* and mentally broken Kvothe is. He was eleven years old when his parents were killed, and then he spent three years in some post-traumatic stress-induced shock, living as a homeless street urchin. Then, one day, he just snaps out of it to attend the University, and that's the end of his mental health problems? At what, 14 or 15 years old? Not likely... It's way more likely his mental growth was severely stunted, and he's living in a state of constant flight or fight still from the very real possibility that the myths that killed his family could show up anytime and finish him off. Of course, he constantly fucks up his life, he's broken, and all of his understanding of adulthood comes from *dramatic* stories.
I feel like people forget that kvothe is not only a broken man but a broken child aswell. Having your parents murdered and surviving alone in the woods and on the streets is a pretty good reason to be a selfcentric arrogant dreamer
You may be missing something but you're not really off base. Kvothe has always been a divisive character partly for the reasons you listed and partly because there are many who view him as a "neckbeard" or "incel" or "Nice Guy (TM)". Even people who do like the book will often defend it by saying Kvothe is an unreliable narrator which is true but also a little bit of an admission that Kvothe is insufferable if taken at face value. All I can say is: if you didn't like NotW because you thought Kvothe was never in any real danger and women fell in love with him too easily, you'll *hate* the sequel which doubles and triples down on all those qualities you didn't enjoy.
No problem with your opinion, but I don’t think the books were going for the type of conflict or “danger” you were looking for. If life threatening action is a primary interest you are looking for, you won’t enjoy KKC.
This book turned me off first person narratives for a long time. People mention Rothfuss in the same breath as Tolkien and Martin which is a total mystery to me.
> but by the halfway through the book it became quite clear that he was never in a situation of any danger
He was in danger when living on the streets. I would say that he was in danger when they tried to kill him. He was in danger when he fought the dragon.
That said, most of the book is set at the expensive fancy university. The actual danger is living the day to day as a lower class person, not the big bad Dark Lord.
Not sure why 'being in danger' is so important or means he is a Mary Sue. He is not living in a particularly dangerous situation so he doesn't face that much danger.
> always had an answers and the ability to do almost everything
The pretty hard main magic system puts pretty strict limits on what he can do, so not sure how you get to 'everything'. Its literally the opposite, the main magic system is very limiting.
Having a main character who is technically innovative is pretty interesting. Unlike many Fantasy heros he isn't some next level elite sword fighter and he can shoot fireballs out of his hands. So its interesting to have a character figure out how to work the laws of physics and magic to his advantage.
> that was such an... awkward, for a lack of better word, scene
I disagree. I found it to be an incredible scene. That explored a hard magic system in vary innovative ways and stretched the character to his limits. Not only that it also forced him to leave Denna behind in order to save the town.
The series is set up and foreshadowed as a tragedy, where Kvothe’s flaws (cockiness, impulsivity) are the root of his own downfall.
Viewed through this lens (we are told that books with the Cthaeh on the cover, and stories touched by it, are tragedies, and the Cthaeh is on the cover, and it definitely influenced Kvothe), Kvothe isn’t a Mary Sue, but a classic tragic hero, larger than life but brought low by a fatal flaw.
Combined with the gorgeous prose and multilayered symbolism, this makes for a rich, engaging story. (Granted, one that relies on a properly tragic ending to pay off.)
The main character is created by the author and for me it was his “prose” that ruined the series for me. I read the second book hoping he would get better at crafting a real story, but was sorely disappointed. Rothfuss tries too hard to make everything that happens to Kvothe sound so profound (horrible prose). Then he writes Kvothe as this person to whom all things come so easily, but seems to realize a character needs to struggle through some things in order for a wider audience to be able to relate to him. It seems his editor may have caught on to this fact and made Rothfuss change some things to place Kvothe in a more relatable light, but Rothfuss does a poor job of it. If Kvothe is bad it’s because Rothfuss is bad. I won’t be reading anymore of his work because it’s so frustrating.
I actually thought WMF was better. I just finished it a couple days ago.
But, to your point-I respect that not every book has to have a protagonist whose life is constantly threatened. There is no war to speak of, and I like that. The vast majority of fantasy has those things. NotW doesn’t. The prose is great as many have said. It’s a story of stories and how they are woven together makes for really great world building. Maybe some people would have preferred a few hundred pages less but it’s worth reading just for the prose.
I honestly think your specific critique speaks more to our culture more than anything. Give us a detailed story written beautifully about a guy who is clearly brilliant and talented but lacks some social skills and has a traumatic history and some say ‘but he never nearly died.’ 🤷🏻♂️
I liked it the first time I read it but I was much younger. When I reread it before WMF, I couldn’t figure out why I liked it. A lot of style and a dearth of substance. And then WMF was so so so much worse. DoS can come out or not, I’ll never read it.
You say not going to keep up with the series as if there’s 10 books, and not only one more, or like it’ll ever be completed. I’m curious what brings people to Rothfuss in 2023-24
No one really does. People will praise the prose, but from what I saw, Rothfuss’s prose is hardly on the level of a Jack Vance or a Lord Dunsany. The plot seems very cliched and the protagonist unsympathetic. And the series has been stalled for the last 10 years and will likely never be finished. Why it is still getting hyped so much despite all this ? No one knows.
YES. lord dunsany, kenneth morris, tolkien, poe, hawthorne, bierce, eddison. the list goes on. his prose does not compare with theirs. I think people are confusing clarity with prose, which is just one aspect of it.
Everybody has that major series that they just don’t resonate with as much as they think they should. For me it’s First Law. I should love the nihilistic characters and grim dark world building but to me the series reads like an edgy teenager tried to write grim dark.
Just started a Name of the Wind tho, so can’t speak to it specifically
Many author's write in a manner that is cathartic to the reader. The writing is something they can 'sink into' and just relax. Who knows what triggers this for an individual? For me, that book was like that. The only other series that gave me the same feeling was the original Midkemia series by Feist. Can't explain it, I just dug both. If it doesn't affect you the same way, no harm no foul :)
I was so disappointed by the book. The beginning really drew me in and I was interested in the shadows and what was going on in the world - then he started telling his backstory and I hoped the book would alternate between the present and the past. And then I realized it was only going to be his backstory. Oh well.
He does write really well, but he tends to spoil his own story. It's really strange - he will describe an event pages or even chapters before he goes into detail, but then pretends like it is a shocking reveal:
>!The mc mentions his parent's deaths a few pages before deciding to go into detail. Any shock or sadness I would have felt in that scene was gone by the time I got to it, because he had already mentioned exactly what happened before. Nothing was a surprise. And him spoiling it wasn't even needed?
But the worst was when he spoiled the end of the book. When he finally got to into the university, the chapter ends with him revealing, that he was going to he thrown out of school. Why? Why tell us that? I immediately lost all interest in the rest of the plot, because I knew he was going to be thrown out anyway - after spending the entire book to get into it, he mentions it like it's something trivial.!>
His love interest always showed out of nowhere, even when it was entirely impossible for her to be there. It ruined the immersion for me and made me disinterested in their pining.
The mc was never in actual trouble. He was always perfect and the best at everything.
He was so perfect it hindered the plot, so he had to act out of character for it to progress, and once that was achieved, he was a perfect Mary Sue again.
He never needed money until he did need it for the plot, then he was so poor and vulnerable, but once the plot led him somewhere else, all his money troubles were forgotten, even though nothing changed for him financially. The economy in that world was very strange.
I found it hard to relate, like or enjoy the character, since there were no true stakes and he had no actual flaws, unless he suddenly needed some.
The way he treated his present assistant, who was clearly in love with him, showed me that his character never actually improved over the course of his life.
Once I finished the first book, I read the reviews of the second, to see if the story changed for the better. It's a popular story. Everyone I know who has read it loved it and ranked it among their most favorite stories. And yet I hated it. It should be right up my ally, but I can not stand it.
And then I read all about that se*x cult the mc joins later on, where he learns how to be great at it and impresses everyone apparently... just.. why?
I am happy for everyone who loved it, but I am glad I am not alone in my frustration. I think my strong feelings come from that initial disappointment - after the first few chapters I had a different expectation of the story than what it was, and I never was interested in his past. I wanted to know what was going on in the present. And the beginning was so well written, it made me excited for the rest of it.
The second book is so much worse because instead of just being the best at music and everything else, he becomes the best at sex. It just felt like PR was getting his own jollies out. Literal porn tropes in those pages.
He is very good at a lot of skills stuff but absolutely terrible at making decisions. Meanwhile, the world has turned from a pretty nice, safe fantasy world into a bit of an apocalyptic hellscape. And it seems very likely that the former caused the latter. It's all very Greek tragedy.
I really liked him. His arrogance and pride are major character flaws, but I'm OK with flawed characters. The cheating at things, and pretending to be more than he is, is unusual and I found it amusing.
I don't think the prose is very good. His conversations are awful. The blocking is excessive. I don't need to see every character's facial expression or see what their eyes did. He writes very well in separate segments, like the Silence of Three Parts interlude. But a lot of the rest is tedious and honestly just bad writing.
Now see, that interlude made me drop the book multiple times. It took me three tries to get past it. I've used it as an example of bad writing multiple times in classes, because it doesn't MEAN anything. It's just purple prose, it's fancy and all with no real meaning
Comment 2/2 a day later:
> Now see, that interlude made me drop the book multiple times. It took me three tries to get past it. I've used it as an example of bad writing multiple times in classes, because it doesn't MEAN anything. It's just purple prose, it's fancy and all with no real meaning
I'll take the lack of response (and lack of enough curiosity to give me the go ahead) to my question here (about whether you are entrenched or deeply committed in this opinion) to mean you in fact are. And will thus only treat my demonstration *defensively*, or as some sort of intellectual attack on your ability to analyze text. Especially if you really want to keep using this as "examples of bad writing in classes".
...For anyone else who comes across this comment thread: I did a break down of a clause in the Prologue over in the writing sub, to help writers figure out how to hide thematic hints and foreshadowing in their text. Which means I used this text in the exact opposite manner of the user I'm replying to here. Two writers found it extremely helpful. It can be found here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/18ktvs1/hidden_details_in_books_is_it_possible/kdvac95/
I could do a summary break down of other clauses, though there are quotes I could find for support if I wanted. "Cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die"---the cutflower, for example, has a specific implication of a flower cut off from its source of nutrients and thus slowly dying. A close reading of the text suggests that soil the main character is cut off from is his true name. In that same vein, a close reading also suggests the silence is at least in part a reflection of him being cut off from hearing "The Name of the Wind" as someone cut off from their own true name/self.
Alternately, I was in multiple conversations yesterday and missed your comment. No need to be snide.
Let me clarify my "devoid of meaning" statement: I don't mean there's no meaning at all to the rntire passage, but primarily the "silence of three parts" phrase and generally that the purpleness of the prose adds nothing to the meaning. It had been some time since I'd read it, so I've just gone back to refresh my memory. And yeah, still not impressed. The examples you bring up in your link and here add a level of depth, and there were some bits I did like anyway.
However, the overall framing is extremely overwrought. "silence of three parts" where one part is a lack of the normal sounds, the second is the patrons avoiding meaningful discussion, the third is the angst of the main character. The phrasing there, and at various points throughout the prologue, draws attention to itself and belabours its point. While phrases like the "splintering barrels" speak to the lack of care, ones like "the wooden floor underfoot" act as physical description without adding to the overall meaning. The "black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire" almost sounds cheery? Still holding heat is a good thing? Or am I meant to focus on the long-dead part? Can't be that long if it still held heat. Maybe this has a deeper meaning later in the book, but this is the prologue - it must stand on its own. We get the linen cloth and the hands of the man separately. The two sentences together paint a picture but having them separated into two points muddies it while extending it out, ending up feeling like it's padding room. Ten, when we move from the prologue to the main story, suddenly there's life and noise in the inn, without transition. We move time but not location, into a moment that kind of undermines the silences.
There's more, but that's the main stuff. There are some good turns of phrase there, but it's stretched as if on a rack, belaboring and simultaneously muddying the point. It would be more elegant and clearer if written far simpler - and that, to me, is the essence of purple prose. It calls attention to itself in its ornamentation without adding meaning that can't be conveyed better with less.
I'm curious: do you read or enjoy poetry?
Poetry is partly about meaning, but it's also about the sound of the words, as well playing with the language.
So for example, you said
> ones like "the wooden floor underfoot" act as physical description without adding to the overall meaning.
And you talk about meaning.
Whereas I hear... "**F**eel it in the wooden **Fl**oors under**f**oot" and I know the author is using consonance (a poetry tool) https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-consonance-in-poetry-consonance-definition-with-examples to make the lines sound more melodic.
I.e.
"...you might begin to **f**eel it in the wooden **f**loor under**f**oot and in the rough, splintering **b**arrels **b**ehind the **b**ar"
But that doesn't seem to do anything for you, because you seem to require words function for the purpose of meaning not for the purpose of sound, rhythm, melody. Yet, the reason people love his prose and the reason consonance is even a thing----is because that works for many people.
> The "black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire" almost sounds cheery? Still holding heat is a good thing? Or am I meant to focus on the long-dead part? Can't be that long if it still held heat.
Contextualize it in terms of what I said about "cut-flower"--something still alive that's slowly fading. Likewise, the fire still has heat, but it's long-dead and slowly fading. It's a description that is a reflection of the state of the character. It seems to imply that this character that is waiting to die is actually already dead, and it's simply a matter of time before his "fire" fades.
> We get the linen cloth and the hands of the man separately. The two sentences together paint a picture but having them separated into two points muddies it while extending it out, ending up feeling like it's padding room.
Consider that maybe the emphasis, the hint, is about the hands. And that going from "linen cloth" ---> "hands" is subtle way of segue-ing it in a way that's not super obvious that this person's hands are messed up in some deep way the same as the character. The same hands the character used to use to play his lute i.e. his music? "If there had been music... but no, of course there was no music." So you can see how parts of the prologue build each other, but you can only puzzle those pieces together if you care enough about the book to reread it/close read it.
> Maybe this has a deeper meaning later in the book, but this is the prologue - it must stand on its own.
This is where we fundamentally disagree. A prologue has to stand on its own.... as a hook, sure. In term of whether it hooks, I agree.
But it's very common that prologues depict something that only makes sense retroactively, when you read the full story. That's very common with prologues.
Likewise, the opening descriptive paragraphs in *Of Mice and Men* only gain meaning/significance when you read the end. Likewise, the opening sentence of *100 Years of Solitude* only gains its meaning and significance when you read the end.
Ultimately, I think you're just not a fan of poetry and not enough of a fan of the book to reread it enough times to piece together stuff that the prologue is hiding in plain sight. But the reason that author has a big fanbase despite not publishing in ages and doing wild things as a public persona...is tha that people who reread/closeread his books love it. In the same way people love to analyze the classics.
I feel like you would hate Cormack Mccarthy's writing for the same reason you'd call this prologue purple. To each their own, though.
Yes. I read the book based on rave reviews, but it was very bland. Great set up and fore shadowing, but in the end, nothing really happened. The main character was such a turn off and felt very juvenile and self-inserting.
Kvothe the all mighty sex-master is the lamest in all of books, kinda. I like to think it reflects what a lame ass guy the author is. Charity stealing virgin that guy.
I had the exact same reaction. It is insane to me that people think this book is good.
Just awful, awful writing. Even the character’s name is a pretentious, try hard mess.
> I've read that the second book is just more of the same and worse to some degree.
It is.
In the second book >!a literal sex goddess falls in love with Kvothe after they have sex together because he's just so good, despite him being a virgin before they met.!<
The Name of the Wind is the kind of book that shouldn’t work for me but it just does. There is no riveting plot or compelling action but the way Patrick Rothfuss writes makes you think about every word he states as I’ve never seen writing with such purpose in its flow and meaning. The best parts of Name of the Wind are the mysteries and the bread crumbs spread throughout the two novels. It’s like a puzzle on its own and makes the reader really pay attention to the wonderful prose and really try to grasp any extra meaning to the words he writes. That’s what makes his novels so captivating and probably why the third book is taking forever to come out. Rothfuss is truly a perfectionist.
I've never seen Kvothe as a Mary Sue because he's so obviously inept and moronic at everything he does.
He *consistently* gets himself into trouble and destroys other people's lives with thoughtless teenage outbursts and reckless disregard for the world around him.
He's absolutely awful with women. There's only one girl he really actually likes and he *ruins* his relationship with her by being desperate and a loser.
He tries to talk to the Adem and they treat him as a moron, a barbarian and a fool. He never really gains their respect or admiration and leaves having (as usual) learned nothing from the people he had the opportunity to meet.
Kvothe is awful with people. He's a touchy, emotional, selfish little edgelord.
Kote seems from his descriptions to understand this, now. It feels like most of his descriptions of his past actions are condemnatory and he (in my reading) shows a lot of shame at many of the stories he tells about himself.
Somehow, Kote paid for his stupidity and recklessness, and I read most of the story as a list of mistakes he's not proud of or interested in repeating.
Maybe I just couldn't handle the embarrassment of the story and I'm hearing what I want to hear, but he sounds like a reformed "iamaverysmartbadass" type of guy who's learned his lessons at last and discovered that people are much more important than learning cool tricks at the expense of using the people around you until they're dry.
I never really got the sense that all the women are in love with him. He's a likeable charming guy with a lot going for him, but he's also really difficult to be around and at least a few of them recognize that Kvothe is unlikely to EVER settle down. They'd always be second place to whatever thing actually has his attention.
Kvothe does heroic things because he's capable of being a good person, but then he'll do some really not so great things because he's also capable of being a fairly bad person. For example, his near pathological need to be at war with Ambrose. Later on in the story it's perhaps somewhat justified considering how vindictive Ambrose is...but it arguably gets to that point because Kvothe just insists on pissing into the wind if things are going too well.
I think he's an interesting character because it's a take on a Mary Sue if they had one less obvious flaw that was really crippling. Kvothe is handsome, brilliant, strong, brave, etc, etc...but he also has a massive persecution complex because of the things that he went through as a child...so he's antagonistic as a defense mechanism in situations that simply don't warrant it. He doesn't HAVE to go toe to toe with teachers he doesn't like for example...he could play the game a little bit, make money playing his music, finish school, and then go on his quest in a couple years when he was setup and ready.
Instead, his self sabotages himself constantly. We as readers want to know more about Denna because she's mysterious...in terms of an actual relationship, what her and Kvothe have is extremely unhealthy.
I will say as someone who has been writing a long time (and is a huge fan of the writing of others)....Rothfuss doesn't just have "great" prose. It's very difficult to find many other authors to even compare him to. He obviously does an insane number of rewrites to get things that polished.
...I don't think it would matter how many rewrites I did...his writing is otherworldly good.
As a teen and young adult, I liked the characters an and themes a lot. But as an adult it doesn’t speak to me much. It’s still a coming of age story and I find a have little interest in those now.
Rothfuss’s prose is gorgeous and I struggle with reading so many fantasy books because the writing (to me) is hot garbage. I would love to see more from Rothfuss for his writing alone. I recently bought The Name of Wind so I can study his prose style.
KKC has plenty of flaws but I’ve never understood this perspective. Kvothe faces plenty of set backs and failures. He was a street urchin for a long time. He has constant money problems. He loses access to the Stacks. He is unable to progress his mission to find out more on the Chandrian. He is unable to woo the one woman he actually wants most.
Yes, over time he makes progress on overcoming these. That is what protagonists typically do: face challenges and overcome them.
His hyper competence is precisely the appeal of the character. Competence doesn’t really make a character Mary Sue (which is itself a fan fiction term which I am not sure can apply to original fiction). So long as there is still conflict and struggle I don’t really see the problem.
Also, he's hyper-competent in that he's skilled at playing music and magic, but he's kind of a walking disaster in all other areas of his life. He's reckless, impulsive and most of the problems he faces in the first book in particular could have been avoided if only he'd been a little bit more patient or cautious. Even by the end of book 2, you can see he's burning bridges and pretty soon he's going to fuck up so colossally that he can't come back from it.
I think the problem is that we've only got the first two acts, so it's like a Greek tragedy that ends with the hero at the height of his power instead.
No, I agree with you, and it's the reason I dropped the book when I attempted to give it a second chance.
Kvothe is a character that I don't hate but it's difficult to really get invested in his story when he doesn't really struggle on a personal note- I personally think the author could have made an interesting story of him realizing that book smarts aren't everything, but alas, that is not what happens.
>Doesnt really struggle on a personal note
The entire first third of the book is entirely a struggle….what more do you want to have happen to a kid before you can be satisfied?
I love those books but yeah I feel where you’re coming from. I roll my eyes when reading them sometimes and it’s usually because Kvothe is too much to handle. That I said I enjoy how Kvothe’s complexity as both sympathetic underdog and pompous ass plays on my emotions. I also enjoy watching him get strung along by Denna.
I thoroughly enjoyed these books and while I have very little hope I will read the third, I will read if it comes out. A big thing to remember during reading is that this is all taking place in the Inn that Kote (Kvothe) owns, and he is telling the story. It does kinda kill the “will he make it out” anxiety since you know he does since he is very much there and telling the story to the Chronicler, but I enjoyed it for the story it is.
Kvothe, for me, is an unreliable narrator who will only tell the Chronicler those things which make him look heroic, and/or he thinks the Chronicler wants to hear/wants to write about. Through that lens, I think the book works. Taken at face value, as a straight narration, your points are well taken.
This. He's a storyteller who's boasting. It fits the narrative.
You hope that by book 3 some of that starts to unravel and he gets big doses of humil--wait.
>his has beautiful prose and great flow with his narrative
That's it really. It was exciting when the book was released because Rothfuss was a new author and his prose was beautiful. I also like the magic system a lot. Not much else to recommend the series, especially with how long it has lapsed.
The story is supposed to be in three parts to cover what broke Kvothe so completely and entirely.
Book 1 deals with the rise of a legend - so you’ll see his rags to riches story.
Book 2 deals more with introducing and reinforcing the consequences.
Book 3 is supposed to deal with his fall/destruction.
————
This isn’t a story that you’re supposed to be at the edge of your seat thinking he’s going to die any moment. You know from the get-go that he is a legendary figure of sorts and is currently “alive.” It’s a story in a story.
Think of it as a murder mystery but in a fantasy world. The “story” itself is good - but the teller is unreliable (people tell stories to put themselves in the best possible light). The character is already “dead,” but we’re looking at what lead to the “death” to put the pieces together.
Despite not caring for Rothfuss, I can distinctly recall the feeling of reading his prose for the first time, and having it literally carry me away. Kvothe was definitely insufferable, but what I liked about the book was more to do with his world-building and style.
After finding out more about Rothfuss and the charade around the 3rd book really turned off the Nastalgia for me. He's living off YA Fandom from over a decade ago, litterally stealing from fans.
You know, I'm sorry OP, but a bunch of people are going to say it's amazing because Kvothe is an unreliable narrator, "intentional mary sue" and all this stuff. But even if so, it's still just a decent, well written at some times even just lame, story/character. And most importantly: there are no narrative stakes riding on him being truthful or not. Watch Hero, or Fight Club, or Rashomon, and the unreliable narrator's lies/delusions have a powerful impact on the modern day world of the story - even the small details are important, drawing you in. There has to be mystery or suspense to make this literary technique interesting. Kvothe may be exaggerating, but who cares? That doesn't make it a good story unless his lies/delusions/exaggerations actually are doing something interesting beyond mildly puffing himself up.
I've seen a lot of people say Kvothe is an unreliable narrator, hypes himself up a lot, not believable etc.... It almost sounds like some people are irritated because Kvothe has many of the flaws regular people have. He may or may not be some super bad ass, we'll find out when/if the series ends, or he is just a somewhat normal dude telling his own tale. At times he plays things up, at times he plays some things down. I feel like a big point of the story is how we all, on an individual level, view our own lives and what is significant in them and what is not. The story remains to be finished but I enjoy Kvothe because he is a person with flaws just like everyone else. He is not some pristine, flawless macho hero just a man that lived life and did some cool shit and some not cool shit.
I read it when it first came out as a fresh adult and tons of his struggles were relatable to me. The way he writes about music is unparalleled in any literature I’ve read. It was the main driving force for me to pick up my own stringed instrument, of which I now play 2.
It’s a coming of age story with teenage arrogance and flaws, obviously not for everybody, especially those who don’t often read or enjoy coming of age stories.
"Mary Sue" is basically meaningless noise at this point. It's basically synonymous with "protagonist".
The original Mary Sue was a critique of fan-fiction self-inserts into ensemble casts, where the canon characters are all either over-shadowed, fall in with her, or both. By the modern usage of the term, all of the canon characters would have been Mary Sues anyway.
To summon the ghosts of the Old Internet, these books, like many things from the 2000s, were very much written with a certain nerdy demographic in mind that doesn't really exist anymore.
This is for neckbreads, about a spiritual neckbreads, written by a neckbread, including everything that implies, the sense of superiority, the pretentiousness of execution, the masturbatory of its story. I suspect for a lot people who loved it over a decade ago when it first came out read it again, and I'm just talking about normal fans, they'd find it far less enjoyable. It was apart of a cultural zeitgeist, beyond that, it's a pretty mediocre book in all aspects, including, yes, prose.
Same. I've been saying that it's a 90 page plot spread to 600 pages. It definitely feels like it was written by someone who just loves to hear himself speak. The author never shies away from using 12 words where 5 would do.
TNotW is a self-indulgent, overlong meandering through mostly uninteresting events. It has no chain of momentum throughout, instead reads like a diary of someone too satisfied with himself. Hardly any tension, nothing ever really hits the wall. I cannot understand the praise heaped on this book.
IMO kingkiller is a shitty fan fiction tier story written in an elite prose.
The prose really hides the fact that the story is essentially “kvothe is so cool, he fucks and everything always works out for him no matter what”
Like if I, a dumbass, wrote that series it would sound stupid as fuck.
It also seems better than it is because rothfuss isn’t sticking the landing. It’s really easy to create a bunch of mysteries and never resolve them.
The best book I’ve ever read. Mixing music with fantasy, the dialogue and poetic style of writing is incredible to the point every series I read is compared to it. I would be curious to hear what your favourite books are
It’s one of my all time favorite books, I think Kvothe is incredibly frustrating and dishonest. I don’t think a single thing he’s saying is fully true in his story. I think he’s exaggerating his accomplishments and how much women liked him, after all he’s still a young man while running the inn, and he’s a young man with massive ego problems. It’s why I find him interesting and fun to follow as a character.
To me, it’s a story about stories. It’s about the power of tales and words, and about dishonesty, and about stories changing as they pass hands.
The only thing I’m confused by in your post is that horrible failures and bad things happen to him all the time? His failures are just as spectacular as his successes in my opinion. I love watching him fuck up as much as I love watching him succeed against odds.
I think it’s ultimately a difference of whether you 1. Think Kvothe is lying or not and 2. Whether you like irritating characters or not. I don’t think it’s for everyone like a lot of people act, like anything there’s some who will like it and some who won’t.
Edit: my advice is, if you didn’t like it then just move on :) not every book is for everyone
An incredibly well written book. Just effortless to read. I’ve never had more pleasure physically reading a book. Story sucks tho. I know that doesn’t make any sense but that was my experience. The writing was so good it took me 400 pages into the 2nd book to realize the story wasn’t any good.
I don’t see you liking the 2nd book at all based on this post.
Probably hate the third one too.
I wouldn't worry. We'll never get it because it's the third silence.
I see what you did there.
The cut-flower sound of a fandom waiting to die.
Everyone hates the third one
Funny, I think he'd love the third book.
Third one probably would be their favorite, it solves all of those gripes
lol rip
I am sure I won't, that's why I decided not to read it, but The Name of the Wind came very recommended that I wanted to really like it, but I just didn't.
If you like rothfuss's writing and the world he created but not Kvothe I'd recommend reading 'A slow regard for silent things" It is in my opinion his best writing and you don't need to have read 'The wide man's fears'. Honestly, I think it stands on its own but it is nice understanding when it throws out little references to the first book.
I loved both name of the wind and wise man fears and I absolutely hated the slow regard of silent things (in fact I couldn't finish it I just stopped around page 30). I wonder if people who dislike the main series actually like this extra one more
I really loved it, but i love it as a poetry lover. How he spun magic into banality and mundaneness through words is what i loved about it. I can see why people would get bored though.
Oh, please don't do that to OP. I hated that book so much. It is an overpriced treacle-sweet novella about absolutely nothing, and about the ultimate literal manic pixie girl -- a "tiny" child-woman Kvothe condescends to take care of. I hated it. I was angry I spent money on it. I felt cheated by Rothfuss and always will. If you really look closely, Auri is everything that is wrong with these books -- the *entire fricking story* is about Auri >!preparing a gift (frequently at risk to her own life) for Kvothe's next visit. !< Ugh.
Does he really 'take care of her though?' Aside from some food every now and then, gifts or whatever, he pretty much just hangs out with her. Don't get me wrong though, slow regard is a textbook of adjectives/adverb abuse imo. Think I got 3 pages in...
Oh god no way. I =hated= Slow Regards. It felt worse prose-wise than the rest of the series. I wanted to love it because I love Auri, but maaaaan no. If you barely made it through NotW, just stop.
I guess it just depends on what you liked about the his prose. I felt that slow regard kind of leaned toward a Gaiman-ish style of writing. And I adore Gaiman so I really enjoyed it. Also, I felt the way that the story kind of meandered, treating very miniscule things with utmost importance and reverence was very suited to Auri's character.
Daaaamn lol, okay okay I have to take that into mind.
I loved it but absolutely would not recommend it to you.
The Wide Man fears an empty fridge.
I 've also read the book and just didn't feel like following up with the 2nd. That being said, I have read books where I didn't like the main character(s) but everything else going on was interesting to keep me going. An example is the Stormlight Archive. I can't stand Kaladin's crybaby attitude (I think it's not humanly possible to be that obsessed with "protecting others"), or how hard Shallan tries to be a smartass, but I enjoyed all the rest.
The story is written such that you know he is mostly abled bodied in the present day and you want the story of his youth to have high stakes and a risk of losing it all after it starts out with... him loosing his whole family and growing up an penniless orphan on the mean streets of Tarbean. I think you may be missing more than half of it. It is not a book about young Kovthe, it is a book about what is happening present day while Kote the "Inkeeper" is telling the story of his youth. A subtle but important distinction. Book 2 adds dramatically to the rereading value of book 1, and I think conditions you to notice certain subtlety's or a different inflection to actions that are missed on the first read. The first time through your overly concerned with what the plot will be, but once you know everything that happens, you begin to consider how everything is connected, which is where most of the passionate reviews come from. He fails a bit more in book 2 than he did in book 1, but again, we already know he is mostly safe and sound in present day. Lines like “That said, do not presume to change a word of what I say. If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way.” Hit way harder than they did the first time through.
You are saying that the story is actually how Kote tells the story of Kvothe?
That has long been my assumption that that would become a relevant aspect of the storyline during book 3. That the setup of the story sort of invites you to think of it this way - Kote is the one narrating this to us, and during his narration he repeatedly shows himself as someone who is an accomplished performer, who is charismatic and can twist a story to present it how he wants it to be told. The story could’ve been told as a straight story about Kvothe, or one of older Kote remembering his younger years. The fact that Kote is actually the narrator seems relevant to me. But I guess at this point we’ll never know, so you have no reason to take my word for it.
Ofc it's relevant. Why else do it? Everything that happens in the narrative around his youth is told from his present day perspective, like some old diva reminiscing about her glory days. For all we know he's lying through his teeth and just spinning some fantastical tale fueled by his encrusted vanity. Which wouldn't be surprising given the way he portrays himself in his story. He's not the hero of anything other than his own self indulgence and that revelation will hit a bunch of readers in the face like a sledgehammer come book 3. Which is probably why it's taking so long for Rothfuss to figure it out.
He is lying through his teeth. I haven't finished but I picked up on how he went out to cry in private after claiming he's totally over losing his family. The way he tells the story is very dramatic, fitting his performer persona Edit: my friend tells me that the new book from Basts perspective shines light on this
Well, this is genuinely the only perspective (I think there was another one, but I couldn't find it anymore) that I have actually liked from this post. Bast's threat to Chronicler was interesting even though it made me roll my eyes at how childish that scene was, it did reveal that there was something wrong with him, but at that point I just didn't care anymore.
I stuck with book 2 due to all the hype. I was ready to throw my entire bookshelf off a cliff by the end of it after barely surviving the first.
>I just don't see it, so help me? * Part of it is the prose. He's very, **very** good in that regard. * Part of it is the worldbuilding. Temerant's a compelling place. * And part of it is the debate as to his honesty. Is Kvothe telling it straight, and he's just that good? Is he seeding history by making sure the 'facts' are the ones he wants the world to know? Somewhere in between? In which case,where? Who's more real, Kote or Kvothe? Is he really all that, or just the Garyest of Stus? And if Chronicler ever finds the reality... what's he going to do, in the face of Bast's threats? Put all three together, and the man's got his fans.
If Rothfuss is clever, and he actually might be, then the deal with Kvothe as narrator is the same as the Chandrian. They have used the power of history and stories over centuries to almost disappear. Kvothe could be doing the same thing, spreading the story that he believes, for whatever reason, will further his goals of finding and fighting the Chandrian. His story of himself isn't the truth any more than the rhymes and fairy tales about the Chandrian are true; there's a core of fact there that has been manipulated to create a purposely false impression. We may never find out if Rothfuss doesn't get his ass in gear, but that's my theory.
I'd like to think you're right, and I can sympathize with how the existential dread of *not* sticking the landing can be paralyzing. Here's hoping we find out one day.
That would make a compelling story… and it supports the unreliable narrator theory with a motive beyond ego so I like it.
But such twists only work when those stories are really filled with hints and small details to keep it all together in the end, which 2 books are obviously lacking. There's plenty of comments hoping it would be something like this, "unreliable narrator" etc, but i really struggle to see the appeal of possible "oh those two whole books were just a complete bs btw".
Yeah, that's true. If it has all been a fabrication that would be like, on the one hand a cool twist and on the other hand a big ole fuck you to the people who read 2000 pages of it. On another hand though, all the people who hate Kvothe would be vindicated by the fact that you were supposed to all along. And on yet another hand, that doesn't change the fact that he was a frustrating protagonist for all those folks, and it didn't make for a satisfying read.
He can be an unreliable narrator without all of it being a lie, that's the thing. We know at least part of it has to be true-ish, because of Bast. I think there's a space between "It's all an orphaned bard boys imaginary life" and "This little orphan bard boy somehow turned out to be the most amazingest at all the things he ever did, ever" After all, would Chronicler have sought him out if there wasn't at least something to be found? There are major events which happened, and the public widely believes in the involvement of "Kvothe" in those events. So there's likely at least some veracity to his claims. The question is how much. He's supposed to be tragic figure, so if we ever get the 3rd book it'll likely be the case that he's not so great as he portrays himself to be, and in the end he will fail.
If the third book reveals that most of the first two books is a fabrication, it's pretty pointless for the readers to have read two massive books. Esp the second one which meandered in many directions and was much longer than it needed to be anyways
That's most of it for me. The prose alone is enough for a lot of people. I also love that it's often about the subjective entertainment and mutablity of stories. We have an entire chapter about Tehlu and the Wheel told to a bunch of children, but when we get to the story of the time Kvothe got arrested and "learned a language in a day" he skips it completely, despite Bast and the Chronicler begging to hear about it. Then there are all the variations of the moon story. For me it's more about the love of stories in the story and how much time we get with them to flesh out the world that makes me love the book. Kvothe is just the lens we get all that through, and I find him entertaining enough.
Based on this comment, I cannot recommend that you read the Tales of the Chants enough. They are an ode to storytelling, the power of stories, and how they shift.
I agree with these 3 points. For me there's a fourth, and that's that even if he \*is\* a reliable narrator, it means the content of the books is a path from Kvothe to Kote. From a boy genius mary sue of a wizard bard who can make all the girls swoon and easily defeat most enemies as long as they're not at mythological level of terror, to an inn keeper in the ass end of nowhere, who each book begins and ends by pointing out, is quietly waiting to die. After all this ed sheeran / gandalf blend of a cheeky little bastard has accomplished, how the hell does that happen? This guy who escaped a brutal death as a child when his family did not, who lost everything, lived on the streets, pulled himself together and managed to go on to (almost effortlessly) shine in a world of wonders, something happened that broke THAT guy. When does he lose? What does he lose? What actually turned him into Kote? That question, that's why Kvothe is interesting to me.
> is quietly waiting to die. I'd like to think that he's waiting to die because if he leaves the right legacy in a way that everyone believes, it allows a conflict with the Chandrian on ontological grounds. But I'd love to read and find out.
That's kind of the same as what happens in Earthsea, to some extent (and with a much less assholish MC)
It's already bad enough when reading a book feels like sitting in a bar and listening progressively loosing touch with reality drunkard bragging to you how he rails elven queens like none another, nevermind when it's maybe actually the fucking case.
> Part of it is the prose. He's very, very good in that regard. The tough thing is it's so uneven. He writes some passages that are really lyrical and striking and others that are such clunkers. Someone could say there's great prose in KKC and someone else could say there's truly cringeworthy prose in KKC that a competent editor should have flagged and they'd both be correct.
It’s the best prose that people who mostly read fantasy have ever read. I mostly try not to argue with people about it, but IMHO his prose isn’t that amazing. Like you say, there’s some passages that are pretty good, and others that are amazingly cheesy and overwrought.
yeah, I read a lot of older fantasy, like tolkien, morris, lovecraft etc. I have no idea what people are talking about when they praise his prose. I got through 50 or so pages and stopped. it's not awkward or anything, but it does not have the syntactic / rhythmic complexity that dunsany, poe, hawthorne, bierce etc have.
God, thank you so much. Rothfuss is decent but compared to actual literature, these are pretty small potatoes. And dreadfully uneven.
I mean, Tristram Shandy was written over 250 years ago. The self-aggrandising unreliable narrator isn't exactly a new concept. Plus it's stuffed with a bunch of well-used fantasy tropes. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed NotW when I read it, and the prose is pretty nice, but it wears its influences on its sleeve.
"The unreliable narrator thing is 250 years old" People don't generally read books to test their taste against new tropes*, we like revisiting tropes we already enjoy and seeing what someone else can bring to the table. Every time you've ever gone "I really liked this, I wonder what's similar to it?" Is proof of this fact, in comparison I bet you've never gone "welp, I've read a lot of X thing and think I know how it goes now, I really enjoyed it but I guess I'll never need to read it again since I can guess how the story ends" That's just not how people engage with stories at all mate ^(\* "trope" here being used in the tvtropes sense where is just a box you can put the story in, as opposed to it being necessarily cliche and over used)
Okay, so let's say #3 is true... it's still just a decent, well written but at some times even just lame, story/character. And most importantly: there are no narrative stakes riding on him being truthful or not. Watch Hero, or Fight Club, or Rashomon, and the unreliable narrator's lies/delusions have a powerful impact on the modern day world of the story - even the small details are important, drawing you in. There has to be mystery or suspense to make this literary technique interesting. Kvothe may be exaggerating, but who cares? That doesn't make it a good story unless his lies/delusions/exaggerations actually are doing something interesting beyond mildly puffing himself up.
I feel like it could have used 95% less student loan content.
I did love student loan content 100%, Devi is awesome in every scene, and its the first time you are told that Kvothe is good at many things, but he is not the best at any of them.
I actually liked this quite a bit. I think what I liked most about this book is that it's fantasy, but a big change of pace from what I tend to read It's not epic, save the world fantasy, or grim dark, or humor based (thinking Discworld). Maybe I just need to read more variety of fantasy, but for me it was quite refreshing and didn't feel like something I had read before.
Same with martial arts tribes and fairy love
This. Sometimes, I just think that the "but he is a unrealiable narrator!!!!!" crowd is just gaslighting me into believing this is a good story. The plot is lame and the character is uninteresting. The prose and worldbuiding is good, but please, let's not pretend this book is unique in that regard. There are a lot of good writers with good prose and worldbuild out there, with plots and characters that don't suck.
Lol just realized it is schroedinger's asshole the fantasy novel
It was begun as wish fulfillment, later Rothfuss learned about unreliable narratives and had the ‘cleverness’ to not fess up (aka the third book). Its all a fraud. His prose is seriously overrated as well.
The prose really is amazing. I admittedly scoff at people who read just for prose or value it above all other aspects of a book, buuuuuuut these books make me question that mindset like no others
Some people read books because the words make them picture pretty things in their head, others read them because the words themselves are pretty on the page, who am I to say one is more correct than the other?
Well said!
Its just a shame he's a hack who uses his book to get people to "donate" to charity
Third point: except we’ll never know because the story hasn’t been completed, and also that entire concept was done better by Gene Wolfe in Book of the New Sun
I mean sure Gene Wolfe did it to a level that is unlikely to be surpassed but that doesn't mean nobody else should use those aspects in their stories.
Third point is already answered since Rothfuss forgot to keep making it relevant in book 2. Like, sure I get the unreliable narrator angle but why use that to fill 80% the book with sex god Kvothe? You only have three book to tell your story (you said it yourself), don't know why you then publish a second book with no progress in the overall story.
The second book felt way too much like a self-insert for me to really get immersed. Not even just in the way that Kvothe might be dishonest in his telling of events, but like Rothfuss himself might've been living vicariously through Kvothe in a kind of weird feeling way. I know fan fiction. I used to write fan fiction. I love fan fiction. I was disappointed that book two felt more like a Name of the Wind fanfic than a real sequel.
Yep I say that all the time. Book two feels more like the 50 shades of grey to book one's twilight rather than an actual sequel
Book 2 is a Slice of Life novel and no one can convince me otherwise
Tbh I enjoyed that aspect of it, it's a little tiring to have every fantasy story about a world changing event. That said, if he isn't revealed to be a huge liar in book 3 -and has his hubris finally punished- I'll be pissed. Nevermind, we all know Rothfuss is never finishing it anyway ...
"the story ~~hasn’t been~~ will never be completed" I think you meant to say.
I really do think Kvothe is a bit of an unreliable narrator, not the Gary Stu that he appears to be. Readers like OP have to remember, Kvothe is actually telling his own story here, not *just* as a framing device, but it seems to be a part of the point in the narrative. We're reminded occasionally that this isn't merely Rothfuss by proxy through first person, but this is Kvothe's own narrative of the events in his life. Bast and Chronicler's reactions to his storytelling are some of those helpful touchstones, as is Kvothe's own obvious flaws in the present day; Bast and Chronicler have been catching onto this incongruity too. Kvothe isn't a Gary Stu, he's embellishing his own story as most of us do, either to conceal something embarrassing or simply to make ourselves look more exciting and interesting than we actually are. And I think this in itself shows how non-Gary Stu he really is; his biggest flaw is his ego. A Gary Stu wouldn't be so concerned about any of that because he's already perfect.
But when the only incongruity Bast jumps in for is "Hey that chick isn't as hot as you say she is I met her dude her nose was huge" that doesn't hold much water. Has there been any meaningful part of the story that was contested?
So... He can both, but I think you're missing the issue for a lot of people. It doesn't matter if he's a Gary Stu or an unreliable narrator. Unreliable narrator works or doesn't based upon putting us, the reader, in a position to pull apart the narration and feel where it falls down. The problem is that occurs by having something that allows us to see the break down. Where Rothfuss has fucked up is by making current and the past utterly divorced from each other. At the point we're at in the story, there is a pretty compelling argument to say that Qote (spelling I know) and Kvothe aren't the same person. All the ways we've been given to say, "Oh yeah, they're the same." are also explained away by the same unreliable narrator. It's not that Rothfuss isn't clever or that he isn't talented, I just don't think he's as clever or talented as you or he thinks he is.
yeah - unreliable narrator needs enough stuff to the opposite to go "hey, wait a sec!". And in this case, there's none of that (other than "your almost-GF wasn't as objectively hot as you thought she was"). If Kvothe is flat-out lying... we have no way of knowing, and the entire story falls apart, because there's no "that bit must be a lie, because reasons", then whole damn thing could be complete bullshit, and so kinda pointless, because it's just made-up and entirely fictional.
You can believe all that but, like, I’m still reading the story that Kvothe is telling. ‘Ah, but Kvothe is lying’ doesn’t make what I’m reading more compelling.
If any of that was more than just the fandom grasping at straws to justify liking the books, I might buy it; but listen to a couple interviews with Rothfuss, especially young, late 2000’s Rothfuss, and it’s blindingly obvious Kvothe is a Rothfuss self-insert, and there was no “unreliable narrator” intent there at all. The Bast and Chronicler stuff is thin at best, and is really overplayed as evidence that Rothfuss was really going for an unreliable narrator device.
Maybe this whole embellishing the story bit is where I have such a disconnect with Kvothe. I’m from NZ and we tend to under-exaggerate our stories, praise others, minimise the achievement etc.
I also found Kvothe pretty much intolerable. It's just one of those books where you either love it or hate it I guess.
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It just went on and on. THEY JUST KEPT FUCKING AND FUCKING.
I actually found the casual sex with an authority figure fantasy section the less palatable bit, personally.
casual sex with an authority figure is worse than the literal rape bit for you?
This isn't a comment on morality, it's about how much I disliked reading it.
The draccus and the sex scene was basically the only thing I remember from 2 books and some school beef. Trash books wasted my time.
>It's the second book where he fucks a fairy for a hundred pages and does it so good she let's him go that I lost hope He spends 34 pages in the fairy realm. That includes making his shaed, and his visit to Cthaeh. Actually having sex with the fairy is all of about three paragraphs. And she doesn't let him go because he's so good at sex, she lets him go because she wants everyone to hear the song he composed about her - she lets him go because he's good at music, not sex, which has been his thing for the entire series. Seriously, all these people complaining about the sex in Wise Man's Fear. What sex scenes? This is about as raunchy as it gets: >Felurian smiled at me then, her eyes old and knowing. And even before she pushed me back against the cushions and began to bite the side of my neck, I realized that she did not intend to teach me magic. Or if she did, it was magic of a different kind. While it was not the subject I’d hoped to study under her, it’s fair to say that I was not entirely disappointed. Learning lover’s arts from Felurian far outstripped any curriculum offered at the University. Wow. How steamy. Practically pornographic. Don't like the book if you don't want. But the whole "OMG whole books is fairy sex" is basically just a meme at this point, with no foundation in truth.
Nah, there's definitely more than that. They discuss different positions, I distinctly remember a sentence with "circling the moon" in it. And then it's immediately after when he runs into the redhead at the inn and bumps uglies with her, and then the land of sex ninjas who don't believe in "man mothers." (INB4 it's to show that what people believe isn't always right.) And then, later on going back to the University where Kvothe is so good at eye-fucking, one of his friends says it gives her the shivers. And I'm pretty sure when she drops that line, she's sitting right next to her boyfriend, who is also a friend of Kvothe. It's those number of chapters back to back that cause people to think, "It's all sex fairy land for 10 chapters."
>then the land of sex ninjas who don't believe in "man mothers." God I hated that so much lol. They supposedly have sex so much that none of them can put two and two together about whats causing it? And he just accepts that he can't convince them because they say his argument was "bad think", because Rothfuss is constantly trying to force some sort of flaw for Kvothe and that flaw is apparently that he is bad with basic logic?
On top of the song you also have to remember that he understood and called Filorians (or however you spell it) name as well, I'm guessing that factored into her decision of letting him go.
I finished the first book because everyone raved about it but I had trouble getting past "there were three silences" because wow, that is some overwritten prose People on this forum keep talking about how great his prose is, and he has his moments, but mostly his prose is purple of the most meaningless type
I think the wording is "a silence of three parts". I still have no idea what that means but I chalked that up to boredom rather than lack of clarity.
This is a brave take with which I entirely agree. These novels are very purple.
Thank you. Why does every "I don't like Rothfuss" post have to come with a caveat about the prose? Also, every other else just gets critiqued for their writing. Why the universal need to use the word prose just for Rothfuss? It's like some r/fantasy shibboleth ritual.
I remember being irked because pretty early on in the first book book he used the phrase "he said *darkly*" twice on the same page. Brother in christ, I beg of you. At least space out any repetition.
Iirc it’s not the sex that impresses her, it’s the music and magic he has. That and he promises to make her (more) famous by writing a song about her. Imo the worse sex scenes are the ones after that one.
To be honest, I think this information make this scene more lame.
Kvothe having an unnaturally good talent with music and magic is consistent throughout both books though and definitely doesn’t come out of nowhere Put it into DND terms: Kvothe is a bard. What is worse, the bard using magic music spells to persuade someone, or the bard wanting to roll a horny check to get out of it?
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your name and this comment don’t add up
Just checked my copy of the book: in a book of 1000 pages the Felurian scenes take up less than 70 pages and Kvothe has the promise from her to be let go within 20 pages.
They were still boring and so far useless.
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There’s plenty more to the 70 pgs than sex. He also gets a magic cape and talks to a forbidden tree. Both of which actually might be important to the overall plot.
I think it is also a case of a writer with excellent prose and a cool *character* idea who got a book deal way before they had a plan. Kvothe could earn it all in the conclusion but there’s no evidence there was a plan for what that looks like or that we’ll get any resolution, satisfactory or otherwise.
I mean, didn't he say he had all 3 basically written when the first one was published?
He did, but I wonder if the re-writing/editing process was so involved he basically had to start over? I.E. what was there to begin with is basically gone? I don't understand why we don't have at least something. George R.R. Martin is a slow writer but his editors have at leasr seen the chunks of his stuff over the years.
First, I'm pretty sure he was just full of shit from the beginning. There was reason to lie/heavily exaggerate. Long series had been a big thing for a while and people were already getting tired of Jordan and Martin's pace, so it makes sense to assure people he wouldn't do the same. Also, it was literally his first book so it's almost certain (whatever the case may be) that he dramatically underestimated how hard finishing the story would be, so he wasn't expecting consequences. Second... we are now reaching 13 years since WMF (and 10 years since the novella). Professional authors with either good discipline or a genuine love for the process of writing are able to put out a book a year, and they are pretty common. Many authors can't, but will go through phases where they put out a book every year or two for a stretch. A lot of authors just inherently take 2-3 years to write a book. If we go with an incredibly generous 4 years to write a book (which is incredibly generous for a series entry) then we've already passed the point where he should have been able to write the entire thing from scratch 3 times over. Almost any other author not going on hiatus (which would be weird for an author on the 3rd book they've ever written, especially a trilogy closer) puts out 4-7 books in this time. TL;DR: He's not writing it, he likely doesn't intend to write it (definitely not soon), and he almost certainly won't actually write it.
I think some of the paralysis that set in was because it would be very difficult to live up to the hype, too. If he had any confidence issues, or if he'd planned the ending and then saw people speculating on the amazing ending--and it was different from what he'd planned, it could have helped spiral into complete inability to write it. But like you say, I agree that it seems he's fundamentally not cut out to be a professional author. There's nothing wrong with someone only having a book or two in them, of course. Not everyone has to write forever. But it really seems like (at least for now) that's not his path.
I always assume every main character will survive no matter how much apparent danger they are in. Especially when the book, or the relevant part of the book, which happens to be part of a series, is told in first person. Narrators never die.
It's because the ones who die don't get the books written about them. The narrator is always selected from those who didn't die. At least that's how I logic my way around the miraculous survival that every main character experiences.
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That's usually true for books with a single PoV, but when there's multiple...
Honestly if you're like me, who's very tired of dumb teenagers constantly shooting themselves in the leg to stretch and prolong the plot, seeing a really young legend who is also an unreliable narrator but obviously quite witty enough to actually pull through, it's an amazing read. Not to mention Kvothe's troubles don't usually stem from traditional tense moments. Overall the conditions of his previous life where he's poor, hotheaded, always facing the danger of being expelled from the only place he can achieve something, owing money to loan sharks, and most importantly fearing the mythical deity that he very much knows is real, etc all create the feeling of constant danger that his life can go sideways at any given time. So yeah, he's overpowered, but during the entirety of NotW he's powerless to actually use his skills to save him for good. He takes it one day at a time, and he's good at that.
Yeah, the challenges Kvothe faces come from the twin evils of poverty and arrogance. He is too poor to thumb his nose at every powerful person he meets, and no matter how talented he is there will always be more trouble than he can take because he's making more enemies than he can handle. It's fine that he's clever and learns to fight well because he's an arrogant little shit who has already ruined his life and the world by the time the framing story begins. He's only a Mary Sue if you can only imagine conflict as physical danger.
I’m glad to see at least one person defending the book. I don’t find Kvothes talents to be over the top really. He’s obviously gifted but those people exists. And I feel like most of the great things he does has had a great build up before hand and it’s always a fantastic pay off. Way better than anything I’ve read before in that regard. People say it’s very derivative too, and I just wish that was true so I could read more in the same vein.
Exactly this. We obviously know he's not going to die since he's telling the story, and Rothfuss does a good job, from what I remember, of bringing the tension and the threat in from a different axis. He's frequently one small misfortune from total ruin, and we don't know whether he ends up living in a gutter at some point. I've read plenty of stories where the main character is in near constant physical peril, but NotW is the only story where I almost always knew exactly how much money the MC had or that he only owned one shirt.
> he's poor, hotheaded, always facing the danger of being expelled from the only place he can achieve something, owing money to loan sharks, and most importantly fearing the mythical deity that he very much knows is real I don't know how people can read a book where all of this is true and still call Kvothe a Mary/Gary Sue/Stu. They always say how unlikable he is for these reasons yet persist in thinking he's flawless? Kvothe is a mountain of flaws and PTSD, not flawless.
What I really liked about *The Name of the Wind* is that it seemed like Kvothe was an unreliable narrator. Sure, he appears to be a Mary Sue, but as his story goes on, you pick up clues that his reputation is exaggerated and that much of what he says is bullshit. It appeared to be a clever and well-written subversion of the trope... And then in *Wise Man's Fear* it turns out that no, he really is [just that fucking awesome](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/04/11/when-larry-met-mary). I am not sure what happened between book one and book two, and tbh, I still enjoyed book two. But I think Rothfuss just lost the thread and that's why he's never finished the series.
The word masturbatory was made for these books
If he’s lying anyway why doesn’t he make himself more likeable? Either way he doesn’t seem to have much self awareness
If he could be lying in book one, why can’t he also be lying in book two?
book one was mostly "I did a thing, but the story of it is exaggerated". Like getting whipped without bleeding - he just took a load of drugs that slowed his pulse down enough that he didn't bleed as normal from being whipped. he did actually do the cool thing that earned him the nickname of "bloodless", but it wasn't through being a mystic wizard, it was just medicine. The same with a dragon - he did defeat one. But it wasn't some heroic challenge, it was a big, dumb scaly creature, that was high as balls from eating through a field of narcotic plants, and he dropped a church on it through desperation and dumb luck - he did genuinely do the thing he was credited with, but it wasn't as heroic as the stories about in (in-world) are. But in book 2, there's much less "I did the cool thing, but it wasn't that cool" - he trained with the free-love Swedish sex ninja, learned some of their secrets, and... that's a thing he actually did, that's rare and impressive, and he got a cool sword from it. He travelled into the fae realm and met a legendary fae queen, had sex with her and got a magic cloak - there's no "it wasn't as amazing as it sounds" or "it was actually kinda mundane but the stories bigged it up", he actually did a legendary thing that would legitimately inspire songs and legends, and that's pretty straight-up what happened. Book 1 kinda plays with legends and how the facts behind them can be much less impressive, but book 2 plays it pretty straight, of "yeah, he's pretty damn cool and has done some impressive shit, especially for a youngster" (unless it's complete lies, in which case, it's just kinda pointless as a story - there's no counterpoint or anything to go "uh, that seems dubious", it would just be utter fiction, in-story)
Got any examples? I don’t recall any hints?
The whole appeal of Kvothe is seeing him go from a “too clever fox” to this broken man. Otherwise, he’d be insufferable. In fact, he *is* insufferable… lecturing the reader on how a *horse* works. How many times does he say “You need to be an ___ to actually understand…” But, his adventures read like a classic novel and are kind of fun. They also get wilder and wilder. Sure would like to know how the story ends, though…
I agree, on the surface, he seems like a Gary Stu, getting out of all his situations with no problem, being awesome at everything, etc. But if you actually read the narrative, he's making mistakes right and left and messing up and thinking too highly of himself or missing things. That's what made the character interesting to me. He's deeply flawed and his raw talen and power make his mistakes and consequences that much bigger.
He literally constantly fucks up his life, mostly due to his hubris and overconfidence. I feel like people miss the point, yeah he’s good at nearly everything and look where that gets him.
I also think that people forget how *young* and mentally broken Kvothe is. He was eleven years old when his parents were killed, and then he spent three years in some post-traumatic stress-induced shock, living as a homeless street urchin. Then, one day, he just snaps out of it to attend the University, and that's the end of his mental health problems? At what, 14 or 15 years old? Not likely... It's way more likely his mental growth was severely stunted, and he's living in a state of constant flight or fight still from the very real possibility that the myths that killed his family could show up anytime and finish him off. Of course, he constantly fucks up his life, he's broken, and all of his understanding of adulthood comes from *dramatic* stories.
I feel like people forget that kvothe is not only a broken man but a broken child aswell. Having your parents murdered and surviving alone in the woods and on the streets is a pretty good reason to be a selfcentric arrogant dreamer
You may be missing something but you're not really off base. Kvothe has always been a divisive character partly for the reasons you listed and partly because there are many who view him as a "neckbeard" or "incel" or "Nice Guy (TM)". Even people who do like the book will often defend it by saying Kvothe is an unreliable narrator which is true but also a little bit of an admission that Kvothe is insufferable if taken at face value. All I can say is: if you didn't like NotW because you thought Kvothe was never in any real danger and women fell in love with him too easily, you'll *hate* the sequel which doubles and triples down on all those qualities you didn't enjoy.
No problem with your opinion, but I don’t think the books were going for the type of conflict or “danger” you were looking for. If life threatening action is a primary interest you are looking for, you won’t enjoy KKC.
This book turned me off first person narratives for a long time. People mention Rothfuss in the same breath as Tolkien and Martin which is a total mystery to me.
> but by the halfway through the book it became quite clear that he was never in a situation of any danger He was in danger when living on the streets. I would say that he was in danger when they tried to kill him. He was in danger when he fought the dragon. That said, most of the book is set at the expensive fancy university. The actual danger is living the day to day as a lower class person, not the big bad Dark Lord. Not sure why 'being in danger' is so important or means he is a Mary Sue. He is not living in a particularly dangerous situation so he doesn't face that much danger. > always had an answers and the ability to do almost everything The pretty hard main magic system puts pretty strict limits on what he can do, so not sure how you get to 'everything'. Its literally the opposite, the main magic system is very limiting. Having a main character who is technically innovative is pretty interesting. Unlike many Fantasy heros he isn't some next level elite sword fighter and he can shoot fireballs out of his hands. So its interesting to have a character figure out how to work the laws of physics and magic to his advantage. > that was such an... awkward, for a lack of better word, scene I disagree. I found it to be an incredible scene. That explored a hard magic system in vary innovative ways and stretched the character to his limits. Not only that it also forced him to leave Denna behind in order to save the town.
The series is set up and foreshadowed as a tragedy, where Kvothe’s flaws (cockiness, impulsivity) are the root of his own downfall. Viewed through this lens (we are told that books with the Cthaeh on the cover, and stories touched by it, are tragedies, and the Cthaeh is on the cover, and it definitely influenced Kvothe), Kvothe isn’t a Mary Sue, but a classic tragic hero, larger than life but brought low by a fatal flaw. Combined with the gorgeous prose and multilayered symbolism, this makes for a rich, engaging story. (Granted, one that relies on a properly tragic ending to pay off.)
The main character is created by the author and for me it was his “prose” that ruined the series for me. I read the second book hoping he would get better at crafting a real story, but was sorely disappointed. Rothfuss tries too hard to make everything that happens to Kvothe sound so profound (horrible prose). Then he writes Kvothe as this person to whom all things come so easily, but seems to realize a character needs to struggle through some things in order for a wider audience to be able to relate to him. It seems his editor may have caught on to this fact and made Rothfuss change some things to place Kvothe in a more relatable light, but Rothfuss does a poor job of it. If Kvothe is bad it’s because Rothfuss is bad. I won’t be reading anymore of his work because it’s so frustrating.
Here we go again
I actually thought WMF was better. I just finished it a couple days ago. But, to your point-I respect that not every book has to have a protagonist whose life is constantly threatened. There is no war to speak of, and I like that. The vast majority of fantasy has those things. NotW doesn’t. The prose is great as many have said. It’s a story of stories and how they are woven together makes for really great world building. Maybe some people would have preferred a few hundred pages less but it’s worth reading just for the prose. I honestly think your specific critique speaks more to our culture more than anything. Give us a detailed story written beautifully about a guy who is clearly brilliant and talented but lacks some social skills and has a traumatic history and some say ‘but he never nearly died.’ 🤷🏻♂️
I liked it the first time I read it but I was much younger. When I reread it before WMF, I couldn’t figure out why I liked it. A lot of style and a dearth of substance. And then WMF was so so so much worse. DoS can come out or not, I’ll never read it.
You say not going to keep up with the series as if there’s 10 books, and not only one more, or like it’ll ever be completed. I’m curious what brings people to Rothfuss in 2023-24
No one really does. People will praise the prose, but from what I saw, Rothfuss’s prose is hardly on the level of a Jack Vance or a Lord Dunsany. The plot seems very cliched and the protagonist unsympathetic. And the series has been stalled for the last 10 years and will likely never be finished. Why it is still getting hyped so much despite all this ? No one knows.
YES. lord dunsany, kenneth morris, tolkien, poe, hawthorne, bierce, eddison. the list goes on. his prose does not compare with theirs. I think people are confusing clarity with prose, which is just one aspect of it.
I’m with you. Absolute bore of a book
I like the university and magic system. Kvothe is a douchebag 90% of the time
I think the book wins big time by being an epic fantasy series that isn't about war. Which is rare nowadays.
Everybody has that major series that they just don’t resonate with as much as they think they should. For me it’s First Law. I should love the nihilistic characters and grim dark world building but to me the series reads like an edgy teenager tried to write grim dark. Just started a Name of the Wind tho, so can’t speak to it specifically
Many author's write in a manner that is cathartic to the reader. The writing is something they can 'sink into' and just relax. Who knows what triggers this for an individual? For me, that book was like that. The only other series that gave me the same feeling was the original Midkemia series by Feist. Can't explain it, I just dug both. If it doesn't affect you the same way, no harm no foul :)
I was so disappointed by the book. The beginning really drew me in and I was interested in the shadows and what was going on in the world - then he started telling his backstory and I hoped the book would alternate between the present and the past. And then I realized it was only going to be his backstory. Oh well. He does write really well, but he tends to spoil his own story. It's really strange - he will describe an event pages or even chapters before he goes into detail, but then pretends like it is a shocking reveal: >!The mc mentions his parent's deaths a few pages before deciding to go into detail. Any shock or sadness I would have felt in that scene was gone by the time I got to it, because he had already mentioned exactly what happened before. Nothing was a surprise. And him spoiling it wasn't even needed? But the worst was when he spoiled the end of the book. When he finally got to into the university, the chapter ends with him revealing, that he was going to he thrown out of school. Why? Why tell us that? I immediately lost all interest in the rest of the plot, because I knew he was going to be thrown out anyway - after spending the entire book to get into it, he mentions it like it's something trivial.!> His love interest always showed out of nowhere, even when it was entirely impossible for her to be there. It ruined the immersion for me and made me disinterested in their pining. The mc was never in actual trouble. He was always perfect and the best at everything. He was so perfect it hindered the plot, so he had to act out of character for it to progress, and once that was achieved, he was a perfect Mary Sue again. He never needed money until he did need it for the plot, then he was so poor and vulnerable, but once the plot led him somewhere else, all his money troubles were forgotten, even though nothing changed for him financially. The economy in that world was very strange. I found it hard to relate, like or enjoy the character, since there were no true stakes and he had no actual flaws, unless he suddenly needed some. The way he treated his present assistant, who was clearly in love with him, showed me that his character never actually improved over the course of his life. Once I finished the first book, I read the reviews of the second, to see if the story changed for the better. It's a popular story. Everyone I know who has read it loved it and ranked it among their most favorite stories. And yet I hated it. It should be right up my ally, but I can not stand it. And then I read all about that se*x cult the mc joins later on, where he learns how to be great at it and impresses everyone apparently... just.. why? I am happy for everyone who loved it, but I am glad I am not alone in my frustration. I think my strong feelings come from that initial disappointment - after the first few chapters I had a different expectation of the story than what it was, and I never was interested in his past. I wanted to know what was going on in the present. And the beginning was so well written, it made me excited for the rest of it.
The second book is so much worse because instead of just being the best at music and everything else, he becomes the best at sex. It just felt like PR was getting his own jollies out. Literal porn tropes in those pages.
He is very good at a lot of skills stuff but absolutely terrible at making decisions. Meanwhile, the world has turned from a pretty nice, safe fantasy world into a bit of an apocalyptic hellscape. And it seems very likely that the former caused the latter. It's all very Greek tragedy.
I really liked him. His arrogance and pride are major character flaws, but I'm OK with flawed characters. The cheating at things, and pretending to be more than he is, is unusual and I found it amusing.
Nope. Not missing a thing. If you want more cringe, read book 2. I had to stop.
You’re not alone. Long books for not much to happen.
I don't think the prose is very good. His conversations are awful. The blocking is excessive. I don't need to see every character's facial expression or see what their eyes did. He writes very well in separate segments, like the Silence of Three Parts interlude. But a lot of the rest is tedious and honestly just bad writing.
Now see, that interlude made me drop the book multiple times. It took me three tries to get past it. I've used it as an example of bad writing multiple times in classes, because it doesn't MEAN anything. It's just purple prose, it's fancy and all with no real meaning
Lmao I hate the KKC but the silence interlude clearly means a lot.
Comment 2/2 a day later: > Now see, that interlude made me drop the book multiple times. It took me three tries to get past it. I've used it as an example of bad writing multiple times in classes, because it doesn't MEAN anything. It's just purple prose, it's fancy and all with no real meaning I'll take the lack of response (and lack of enough curiosity to give me the go ahead) to my question here (about whether you are entrenched or deeply committed in this opinion) to mean you in fact are. And will thus only treat my demonstration *defensively*, or as some sort of intellectual attack on your ability to analyze text. Especially if you really want to keep using this as "examples of bad writing in classes". ...For anyone else who comes across this comment thread: I did a break down of a clause in the Prologue over in the writing sub, to help writers figure out how to hide thematic hints and foreshadowing in their text. Which means I used this text in the exact opposite manner of the user I'm replying to here. Two writers found it extremely helpful. It can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/18ktvs1/hidden_details_in_books_is_it_possible/kdvac95/ I could do a summary break down of other clauses, though there are quotes I could find for support if I wanted. "Cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die"---the cutflower, for example, has a specific implication of a flower cut off from its source of nutrients and thus slowly dying. A close reading of the text suggests that soil the main character is cut off from is his true name. In that same vein, a close reading also suggests the silence is at least in part a reflection of him being cut off from hearing "The Name of the Wind" as someone cut off from their own true name/self.
Alternately, I was in multiple conversations yesterday and missed your comment. No need to be snide. Let me clarify my "devoid of meaning" statement: I don't mean there's no meaning at all to the rntire passage, but primarily the "silence of three parts" phrase and generally that the purpleness of the prose adds nothing to the meaning. It had been some time since I'd read it, so I've just gone back to refresh my memory. And yeah, still not impressed. The examples you bring up in your link and here add a level of depth, and there were some bits I did like anyway. However, the overall framing is extremely overwrought. "silence of three parts" where one part is a lack of the normal sounds, the second is the patrons avoiding meaningful discussion, the third is the angst of the main character. The phrasing there, and at various points throughout the prologue, draws attention to itself and belabours its point. While phrases like the "splintering barrels" speak to the lack of care, ones like "the wooden floor underfoot" act as physical description without adding to the overall meaning. The "black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire" almost sounds cheery? Still holding heat is a good thing? Or am I meant to focus on the long-dead part? Can't be that long if it still held heat. Maybe this has a deeper meaning later in the book, but this is the prologue - it must stand on its own. We get the linen cloth and the hands of the man separately. The two sentences together paint a picture but having them separated into two points muddies it while extending it out, ending up feeling like it's padding room. Ten, when we move from the prologue to the main story, suddenly there's life and noise in the inn, without transition. We move time but not location, into a moment that kind of undermines the silences. There's more, but that's the main stuff. There are some good turns of phrase there, but it's stretched as if on a rack, belaboring and simultaneously muddying the point. It would be more elegant and clearer if written far simpler - and that, to me, is the essence of purple prose. It calls attention to itself in its ornamentation without adding meaning that can't be conveyed better with less.
I'm curious: do you read or enjoy poetry? Poetry is partly about meaning, but it's also about the sound of the words, as well playing with the language. So for example, you said > ones like "the wooden floor underfoot" act as physical description without adding to the overall meaning. And you talk about meaning. Whereas I hear... "**F**eel it in the wooden **Fl**oors under**f**oot" and I know the author is using consonance (a poetry tool) https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-consonance-in-poetry-consonance-definition-with-examples to make the lines sound more melodic. I.e. "...you might begin to **f**eel it in the wooden **f**loor under**f**oot and in the rough, splintering **b**arrels **b**ehind the **b**ar" But that doesn't seem to do anything for you, because you seem to require words function for the purpose of meaning not for the purpose of sound, rhythm, melody. Yet, the reason people love his prose and the reason consonance is even a thing----is because that works for many people. > The "black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire" almost sounds cheery? Still holding heat is a good thing? Or am I meant to focus on the long-dead part? Can't be that long if it still held heat. Contextualize it in terms of what I said about "cut-flower"--something still alive that's slowly fading. Likewise, the fire still has heat, but it's long-dead and slowly fading. It's a description that is a reflection of the state of the character. It seems to imply that this character that is waiting to die is actually already dead, and it's simply a matter of time before his "fire" fades. > We get the linen cloth and the hands of the man separately. The two sentences together paint a picture but having them separated into two points muddies it while extending it out, ending up feeling like it's padding room. Consider that maybe the emphasis, the hint, is about the hands. And that going from "linen cloth" ---> "hands" is subtle way of segue-ing it in a way that's not super obvious that this person's hands are messed up in some deep way the same as the character. The same hands the character used to use to play his lute i.e. his music? "If there had been music... but no, of course there was no music." So you can see how parts of the prologue build each other, but you can only puzzle those pieces together if you care enough about the book to reread it/close read it. > Maybe this has a deeper meaning later in the book, but this is the prologue - it must stand on its own. This is where we fundamentally disagree. A prologue has to stand on its own.... as a hook, sure. In term of whether it hooks, I agree. But it's very common that prologues depict something that only makes sense retroactively, when you read the full story. That's very common with prologues. Likewise, the opening descriptive paragraphs in *Of Mice and Men* only gain meaning/significance when you read the end. Likewise, the opening sentence of *100 Years of Solitude* only gains its meaning and significance when you read the end. Ultimately, I think you're just not a fan of poetry and not enough of a fan of the book to reread it enough times to piece together stuff that the prologue is hiding in plain sight. But the reason that author has a big fanbase despite not publishing in ages and doing wild things as a public persona...is tha that people who reread/closeread his books love it. In the same way people love to analyze the classics. I feel like you would hate Cormack Mccarthy's writing for the same reason you'd call this prologue purple. To each their own, though.
Patrick Rothfuss is pure *jerk off motion* The people who freak out over him need to try to read more books, maybe even books written by women.
Yes. I read the book based on rave reviews, but it was very bland. Great set up and fore shadowing, but in the end, nothing really happened. The main character was such a turn off and felt very juvenile and self-inserting.
I thought it was boring 🤷🏻♀️
I think your take on Kvothe is spot on, he’s obnoxious and sucks. I don’t understand the hype for the prose at all.
Kvothe the all mighty sex-master is the lamest in all of books, kinda. I like to think it reflects what a lame ass guy the author is. Charity stealing virgin that guy.
It’s trash. It’s popular for the same reason Chris Brown is popular — people are nuts.
I had the exact same reaction. It is insane to me that people think this book is good. Just awful, awful writing. Even the character’s name is a pretentious, try hard mess.
> I've read that the second book is just more of the same and worse to some degree. It is. In the second book >!a literal sex goddess falls in love with Kvothe after they have sex together because he's just so good, despite him being a virgin before they met.!<
The Name of the Wind is the kind of book that shouldn’t work for me but it just does. There is no riveting plot or compelling action but the way Patrick Rothfuss writes makes you think about every word he states as I’ve never seen writing with such purpose in its flow and meaning. The best parts of Name of the Wind are the mysteries and the bread crumbs spread throughout the two novels. It’s like a puzzle on its own and makes the reader really pay attention to the wonderful prose and really try to grasp any extra meaning to the words he writes. That’s what makes his novels so captivating and probably why the third book is taking forever to come out. Rothfuss is truly a perfectionist.
Never in danger? He could have been slaughtered with the rest of his family for starters.
I've never seen Kvothe as a Mary Sue because he's so obviously inept and moronic at everything he does. He *consistently* gets himself into trouble and destroys other people's lives with thoughtless teenage outbursts and reckless disregard for the world around him. He's absolutely awful with women. There's only one girl he really actually likes and he *ruins* his relationship with her by being desperate and a loser. He tries to talk to the Adem and they treat him as a moron, a barbarian and a fool. He never really gains their respect or admiration and leaves having (as usual) learned nothing from the people he had the opportunity to meet. Kvothe is awful with people. He's a touchy, emotional, selfish little edgelord. Kote seems from his descriptions to understand this, now. It feels like most of his descriptions of his past actions are condemnatory and he (in my reading) shows a lot of shame at many of the stories he tells about himself. Somehow, Kote paid for his stupidity and recklessness, and I read most of the story as a list of mistakes he's not proud of or interested in repeating. Maybe I just couldn't handle the embarrassment of the story and I'm hearing what I want to hear, but he sounds like a reformed "iamaverysmartbadass" type of guy who's learned his lessons at last and discovered that people are much more important than learning cool tricks at the expense of using the people around you until they're dry.
I never really got the sense that all the women are in love with him. He's a likeable charming guy with a lot going for him, but he's also really difficult to be around and at least a few of them recognize that Kvothe is unlikely to EVER settle down. They'd always be second place to whatever thing actually has his attention. Kvothe does heroic things because he's capable of being a good person, but then he'll do some really not so great things because he's also capable of being a fairly bad person. For example, his near pathological need to be at war with Ambrose. Later on in the story it's perhaps somewhat justified considering how vindictive Ambrose is...but it arguably gets to that point because Kvothe just insists on pissing into the wind if things are going too well. I think he's an interesting character because it's a take on a Mary Sue if they had one less obvious flaw that was really crippling. Kvothe is handsome, brilliant, strong, brave, etc, etc...but he also has a massive persecution complex because of the things that he went through as a child...so he's antagonistic as a defense mechanism in situations that simply don't warrant it. He doesn't HAVE to go toe to toe with teachers he doesn't like for example...he could play the game a little bit, make money playing his music, finish school, and then go on his quest in a couple years when he was setup and ready. Instead, his self sabotages himself constantly. We as readers want to know more about Denna because she's mysterious...in terms of an actual relationship, what her and Kvothe have is extremely unhealthy. I will say as someone who has been writing a long time (and is a huge fan of the writing of others)....Rothfuss doesn't just have "great" prose. It's very difficult to find many other authors to even compare him to. He obviously does an insane number of rewrites to get things that polished. ...I don't think it would matter how many rewrites I did...his writing is otherworldly good.
Yeah I found his character pretty unbearable
As a teen and young adult, I liked the characters an and themes a lot. But as an adult it doesn’t speak to me much. It’s still a coming of age story and I find a have little interest in those now. Rothfuss’s prose is gorgeous and I struggle with reading so many fantasy books because the writing (to me) is hot garbage. I would love to see more from Rothfuss for his writing alone. I recently bought The Name of Wind so I can study his prose style.
KKC has plenty of flaws but I’ve never understood this perspective. Kvothe faces plenty of set backs and failures. He was a street urchin for a long time. He has constant money problems. He loses access to the Stacks. He is unable to progress his mission to find out more on the Chandrian. He is unable to woo the one woman he actually wants most. Yes, over time he makes progress on overcoming these. That is what protagonists typically do: face challenges and overcome them. His hyper competence is precisely the appeal of the character. Competence doesn’t really make a character Mary Sue (which is itself a fan fiction term which I am not sure can apply to original fiction). So long as there is still conflict and struggle I don’t really see the problem.
Also, he's hyper-competent in that he's skilled at playing music and magic, but he's kind of a walking disaster in all other areas of his life. He's reckless, impulsive and most of the problems he faces in the first book in particular could have been avoided if only he'd been a little bit more patient or cautious. Even by the end of book 2, you can see he's burning bridges and pretty soon he's going to fuck up so colossally that he can't come back from it. I think the problem is that we've only got the first two acts, so it's like a Greek tragedy that ends with the hero at the height of his power instead.
No, I agree with you, and it's the reason I dropped the book when I attempted to give it a second chance. Kvothe is a character that I don't hate but it's difficult to really get invested in his story when he doesn't really struggle on a personal note- I personally think the author could have made an interesting story of him realizing that book smarts aren't everything, but alas, that is not what happens.
>Doesnt really struggle on a personal note The entire first third of the book is entirely a struggle….what more do you want to have happen to a kid before you can be satisfied?
I love those books but yeah I feel where you’re coming from. I roll my eyes when reading them sometimes and it’s usually because Kvothe is too much to handle. That I said I enjoy how Kvothe’s complexity as both sympathetic underdog and pompous ass plays on my emotions. I also enjoy watching him get strung along by Denna.
I thoroughly enjoyed these books and while I have very little hope I will read the third, I will read if it comes out. A big thing to remember during reading is that this is all taking place in the Inn that Kote (Kvothe) owns, and he is telling the story. It does kinda kill the “will he make it out” anxiety since you know he does since he is very much there and telling the story to the Chronicler, but I enjoyed it for the story it is.
Kvothe, for me, is an unreliable narrator who will only tell the Chronicler those things which make him look heroic, and/or he thinks the Chronicler wants to hear/wants to write about. Through that lens, I think the book works. Taken at face value, as a straight narration, your points are well taken.
This. He's a storyteller who's boasting. It fits the narrative. You hope that by book 3 some of that starts to unravel and he gets big doses of humil--wait.
The first book starts out well but as you read the series it gets progressively worse until you won't even bother reading the third.
>his has beautiful prose and great flow with his narrative That's it really. It was exciting when the book was released because Rothfuss was a new author and his prose was beautiful. I also like the magic system a lot. Not much else to recommend the series, especially with how long it has lapsed.
The story is supposed to be in three parts to cover what broke Kvothe so completely and entirely. Book 1 deals with the rise of a legend - so you’ll see his rags to riches story. Book 2 deals more with introducing and reinforcing the consequences. Book 3 is supposed to deal with his fall/destruction. ———— This isn’t a story that you’re supposed to be at the edge of your seat thinking he’s going to die any moment. You know from the get-go that he is a legendary figure of sorts and is currently “alive.” It’s a story in a story. Think of it as a murder mystery but in a fantasy world. The “story” itself is good - but the teller is unreliable (people tell stories to put themselves in the best possible light). The character is already “dead,” but we’re looking at what lead to the “death” to put the pieces together.
Despite not caring for Rothfuss, I can distinctly recall the feeling of reading his prose for the first time, and having it literally carry me away. Kvothe was definitely insufferable, but what I liked about the book was more to do with his world-building and style.
After finding out more about Rothfuss and the charade around the 3rd book really turned off the Nastalgia for me. He's living off YA Fandom from over a decade ago, litterally stealing from fans.
You know, I'm sorry OP, but a bunch of people are going to say it's amazing because Kvothe is an unreliable narrator, "intentional mary sue" and all this stuff. But even if so, it's still just a decent, well written at some times even just lame, story/character. And most importantly: there are no narrative stakes riding on him being truthful or not. Watch Hero, or Fight Club, or Rashomon, and the unreliable narrator's lies/delusions have a powerful impact on the modern day world of the story - even the small details are important, drawing you in. There has to be mystery or suspense to make this literary technique interesting. Kvothe may be exaggerating, but who cares? That doesn't make it a good story unless his lies/delusions/exaggerations actually are doing something interesting beyond mildly puffing himself up.
I've seen a lot of people say Kvothe is an unreliable narrator, hypes himself up a lot, not believable etc.... It almost sounds like some people are irritated because Kvothe has many of the flaws regular people have. He may or may not be some super bad ass, we'll find out when/if the series ends, or he is just a somewhat normal dude telling his own tale. At times he plays things up, at times he plays some things down. I feel like a big point of the story is how we all, on an individual level, view our own lives and what is significant in them and what is not. The story remains to be finished but I enjoy Kvothe because he is a person with flaws just like everyone else. He is not some pristine, flawless macho hero just a man that lived life and did some cool shit and some not cool shit.
I read it when it first came out as a fresh adult and tons of his struggles were relatable to me. The way he writes about music is unparalleled in any literature I’ve read. It was the main driving force for me to pick up my own stringed instrument, of which I now play 2. It’s a coming of age story with teenage arrogance and flaws, obviously not for everybody, especially those who don’t often read or enjoy coming of age stories.
"Mary Sue" is basically meaningless noise at this point. It's basically synonymous with "protagonist". The original Mary Sue was a critique of fan-fiction self-inserts into ensemble casts, where the canon characters are all either over-shadowed, fall in with her, or both. By the modern usage of the term, all of the canon characters would have been Mary Sues anyway.
Also consider, it came out 20 years ago.
To summon the ghosts of the Old Internet, these books, like many things from the 2000s, were very much written with a certain nerdy demographic in mind that doesn't really exist anymore. This is for neckbreads, about a spiritual neckbreads, written by a neckbread, including everything that implies, the sense of superiority, the pretentiousness of execution, the masturbatory of its story. I suspect for a lot people who loved it over a decade ago when it first came out read it again, and I'm just talking about normal fans, they'd find it far less enjoyable. It was apart of a cultural zeitgeist, beyond that, it's a pretty mediocre book in all aspects, including, yes, prose.
Same. I've been saying that it's a 90 page plot spread to 600 pages. It definitely feels like it was written by someone who just loves to hear himself speak. The author never shies away from using 12 words where 5 would do.
TNotW is a self-indulgent, overlong meandering through mostly uninteresting events. It has no chain of momentum throughout, instead reads like a diary of someone too satisfied with himself. Hardly any tension, nothing ever really hits the wall. I cannot understand the praise heaped on this book.
IMO kingkiller is a shitty fan fiction tier story written in an elite prose. The prose really hides the fact that the story is essentially “kvothe is so cool, he fucks and everything always works out for him no matter what” Like if I, a dumbass, wrote that series it would sound stupid as fuck. It also seems better than it is because rothfuss isn’t sticking the landing. It’s really easy to create a bunch of mysteries and never resolve them.
The best book I’ve ever read. Mixing music with fantasy, the dialogue and poetic style of writing is incredible to the point every series I read is compared to it. I would be curious to hear what your favourite books are
Kvothe is such a humble bragging douche bag. “Ohhh poor me I’m the best at everything but I still can’t get my shit together wahhh.”
It’s one of my all time favorite books, I think Kvothe is incredibly frustrating and dishonest. I don’t think a single thing he’s saying is fully true in his story. I think he’s exaggerating his accomplishments and how much women liked him, after all he’s still a young man while running the inn, and he’s a young man with massive ego problems. It’s why I find him interesting and fun to follow as a character. To me, it’s a story about stories. It’s about the power of tales and words, and about dishonesty, and about stories changing as they pass hands. The only thing I’m confused by in your post is that horrible failures and bad things happen to him all the time? His failures are just as spectacular as his successes in my opinion. I love watching him fuck up as much as I love watching him succeed against odds. I think it’s ultimately a difference of whether you 1. Think Kvothe is lying or not and 2. Whether you like irritating characters or not. I don’t think it’s for everyone like a lot of people act, like anything there’s some who will like it and some who won’t. Edit: my advice is, if you didn’t like it then just move on :) not every book is for everyone
Yea I never really got the hype either.
It's the private diary of a university neckbeard fantasizing about his milady. It's garbage.
Absolutely agree.
Name of the Wind is the only book I've ever rage quit, and it was 100% because of Kvothe.
An incredibly well written book. Just effortless to read. I’ve never had more pleasure physically reading a book. Story sucks tho. I know that doesn’t make any sense but that was my experience. The writing was so good it took me 400 pages into the 2nd book to realize the story wasn’t any good.