The Wise Man's Fear

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, 993 pages

In this second book of the Kingkiller Chronicles, innkeeper/scholar/mage/bard Kvothe continues telling the life story he began in The Name of the Wind. Kvothe's tale takes him from the halls of arcane study at the University to the palace of the Maer (a wealthy man who, had certain historical conflicts gone slightly differently, would be the King) to chasing bandits in the wilds of the forest to the Fae to Ademre (the exotic home of unbeatable mercenaries) and back again.

The story twists and turns, dips and dives, but propels forward at an incredibly quick and readable pace — this book did NOT feel like 993 pages. I very much enjoyed it, and now count myself among the Rothfuss fans that are waiting impatiently for the next volume.

The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, 661 pages

Small-town innkeeper Kote has a secret. Turns out he's really Kvothe, a man of near-mythical stature throughout the land. People tell stories of the time that he called down a demon to eat up a man who threatened to stab him in a public square if he didn't give up his horse (or perhaps it was a purse of coins in a darkened alley? or maybe it wasn't a demon, but just thunder and lightning?). They tell of his saving a whole town from a ravaging dragon, of singing and performing on a lute so well as to soften the hardest of hearts, of rescuing a woman from a horrific fire and returning her to safety unscathed, and hundreds of other tales.

Who knows how true these stories are? Only Kvothe. And he's ready to tell the tale.

The Name of the Wind is a big doorstop of a book, but it's a story so well-spun that it goes quickly. While parts of this story reminded me of Harry Potter and The Magicians, it bears a much stronger resemblance to Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, both in format as a life story and in many of its elements — childhood tragedy and poverty, an idealized young woman, and an utterly loathsome adversary, among others. It's incredible that this is a debut novel. I'm excited to read the rest of Kvothe's story, which continues in The Wise Man's Fear and the as-yet-unpublished rest of this series.