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Rare Polar Bear posted:Still gonna read the sequel, though. So there. It's much, much worse.
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Oct 31, 2012 18:53
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Junk Science posted:It's much, much worse. I guess I should brace myself, then. Speaking of bracing, read a little of GRRM's blog, and saw he mentions Patrick Rothfuss as "tireless and talented". I wonder if he's read the books? Rare Polar Bear fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 10:18
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Kynetx posted:Fine. Point being that calculus existed in a time before the germ theory of disease, which I use to illustrate the point that technologies don't advance at equal rates. The difference being that since things didn't develop equally, there weren't clear cut distinctions between disciplines. New disciplines emerged as things developed. This world has clean cut distinctions between all major disciplines that align exactly with our own. It's silly.
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Nov 1, 2012 11:02
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Rare Polar Bear posted:I guess I should brace myself, then. I'm sure he does, doesn't GRRM do anything to avoid actually having to write?
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Nov 1, 2012 13:55
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Rare Polar Bear posted:I guess I should brace myself, then. Something that sets apart good authors is the enormous amount of research they put into their settings. "BUT IT'S FANTASY"  Yeah but if you want a believable, cohesive medieval-renaissance-fantasy world you need to stick a little closer to those historical settings before branching off with wizards and poo poo so you don't end up with something that doesn't make sense internally.
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Nov 1, 2012 14:45
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Above Our Own posted:Something that sets apart good authors is the enormous amount of research they put into their settings. "BUT IT'S FANTASY" Just look at The Baroque Cycle. That's how you do a book that tackles academia. I know "The Name of the Wind" isn't earth, but it felt just like earth. It felt like a bitter guy writing fanfiction about the American college experience where this time he was the most popular and everyone thought he was awesome and he really got the best of that jerk who picked on him and was better than him at everything to boot. Also, I don't feel like the DaVinci comparison is fair at all. DaVinci had awesome to crazy ideas but no real way to implement them. A lot of them are analogous to modern day inventions, but it's not like he actually was flying around in a helicopter. The technology just wasn't there for it. The collective "know-how" didn't exist and he wasn't exactly influential in their creation. Kvothe's world doesn't have that problem. The knowledge is all there and readily available to anyone who goes to the University, which is well known and frequented by the nobility and scholars from all over the world. The knowledge is helpfully categorized with masters in every major known field. They have the means to produce reactions and mechanical devices and then they do nothing with that knowledge. It's just that Kvothe is such a super special snow-flake that he does things no one else can do, for some reason. It's like everyone else is just perfectly happy with the status quo, except for that one master who wants a perpetually burning candle even though such a device is completely worthless in their world. But still he's the only one that seems to express creativity. Maybe the story later tries to justify Kvothe by having him be some hero from prophecy, but it seems like he's only special because the author wanted a super awesome kick butt great at everything protagonist.
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Nov 1, 2012 15:34
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Haraksha posted:it seems like he's only special because the author wanted a super awesome kick butt great at everything protagonist. Remember that loan shark who frequently deals with arcanists? Why the gently caress isn't she wearing a gram? Etc. e. And I seem to remember Kvothe inventing a sygaldric refrigerator at one point. Like holy poo poo, how is one of the most pivotal inventions in the history of mankind that could prevent millions from starvation not in widespread use when there is a huge body of people who have had a detailed understanding of heat transference for centuries? Above Our Own fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 15:57
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Above Our Own posted:This is definitely one of the book's major weak points. Kvothe is presented as a genius but doesn't really do anything all that clever, and everyone around him is super dimwitted. He didn't invent it, he just repaired one. It's even implied that it is a fairly common appliance but the inn had a poorly built version that didn't work well.
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Nov 1, 2012 16:55
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That reminds me of what people were saying about how if guys like Newton could suddenly come up with fantastic ideas, then Kvothe could do the same. This is dumb for two reasons. First, Newton himself admits that he didn't do anything special. He was just building on the work other people had done and it was inevitable that we'd make the discoveries he did. Second, he wasn't even unique because other people were independently making the exact same advances he was at the same time! Is anyone else in the story comparable to Kvothe? Who is his Leibniz? And I don't just mean "rival". Leibniz was actually better than Newton in some ways and his model of the universe seems to be more relevant today than Newton's. Besides, Newton was far from a perfect person. He had truly terrible flaws. While being particularly good at math and optics, he was a superstitious Christian occultist who believed in alchemy. He was also a total dick and was notorious for being jealous of who got credit for what. This makes him way more interesting than Kvothe as well because while he was certainly brilliant, he was also completely wrong about some things and had real weaknesses as a person.
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Nov 1, 2012 16:57
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A lot of places had the magic fridges and were more likely to have them the closer to Hogwarts you are the cheaper they are to get so even run down inn can afford one. While if you were far away from Hogwarts only the super rich inn could afford one. Also who cares if poor people are dying that's why they are serfs would be the view of the nobility. The things are expensive and if broken not cheap to repair because the cost of hiring a wizard. Loan shark girl doesn't have a gram because she was kicked out of Hogwarts and did not find the secret hidden book with the precursor recipe inside it.
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Nov 1, 2012 17:29
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Above Our Own posted:He is very talented. I think his problem is he lacks an editor with the balls to get on him to refine his poo poo. His other problem is that he decided to publish his creative writing story he wrote in college because he has a strong emotional attachment to the work. He should have counted it as a learning experience and moved on to create something more matured, technically speaking. Or at least rewrote the novel from scratch. I know I've posted this before, but it really can't be emphasized enough that the only criteria from his editor for The Wise Man's Fear was "make sure the length isn't so long that it's impossible to print the book".
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Nov 1, 2012 17:35
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Srice posted:I know I've posted this before, but it really can't be emphasized enough that the only criteria from his editor for The Wise Man's Fear was "make sure the length isn't so long that it's impossible to print the book". Or she'd have to give hair and blood to one of her sketch clients
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Nov 1, 2012 17:44
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If memory serves, it's mentioned in the first book that sympathetic devices are a luxury item out of the reach of all but the most wealthy companies and individuals. It's pretty apparent that for all the technical ability of the educated classes, they haven't tackled transportation in any meaningful way, which might explain the high cost of technology. I guess it comes down to the individual, but I don't get hung up on this stuff. The female characters are what pulls me out of the story.
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Nov 2, 2012 00:22
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Kynetx posted:If memory serves, it's mentioned in the first book that sympathetic devices are a luxury item out of the reach of all but the most wealthy companies and individuals. It's pretty apparent that for all the technical ability of the educated classes, they haven't tackled transportation in any meaningful way, which might explain the high cost of technology. To me, there are just so many obvious things that could be done with the abilities they have that people aren't doing and it doesn't make any sense that they're not doing it. Why isn't the University the wealthiest place in the world? Why are they bothering with tuition? What exactly is their motivation? Are they a repository of knowledge? Keepers of secrets? Do they want to better the world? Or are they out to use their knowledge to earn a profit. It seems like it's a pretty open secret that they just suck money from the wealthy in order to better themselves. So why go through the trouble of the tuition system? It seems perfectly designed to keep brilliant but poor people out of the club (which seems to be exactly what Rothfuss wanted since it's a major plot point of book 1, but then it's just a tool of the plot and doesn't actually make any sense). Why aren't all students required to produce basic sympathetic devices that the university sells to the elite at exorbitant prices? It seems like the work is not only voluntary, but they prefer you to spend your time studying than taking up odd tasks if you're not ready for it. This implies that their goal is to spread knowledge, but then why put an artificial barrier on that? The transportation thing boggles my mind too. They have near infinite energy and ways to cause things to rotate indefinitely. You could literally just have some kids cranking a wheel in shifts to power a locomotive type device across huge distances. It only took us a hundred years or so (and certainly less than two hundred) between the first modern steam engines and functional vehicles. It's stated over and over again that it's been a couple of hundred years since the majority of people stopped burning them at the stake. But that doesn't imply that their knowledge only recently grew, just that their numbers did and their practices could be done more openly. They've had centuries to work on incredibly basic ideas to overcome barriers of transportation or produce devastating weapons, but no one has done it. It's not like people with these skills are bound to the University for life. They get expelled. There are even chapters dedicated to the training of students dueling other students. You'd think the world would be ravaged by rogues selling ideas to rich kings and the University sending teams of assassins to hunt them down. But everyone seems to honorably stick to a code where they don't want people to start burning them at the stake again. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
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Nov 2, 2012 03:17
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That's the problem with hard magic systems. If you're going to have something as potent and versatile as sympathy/sygaldry you better have a drat good reason why people are still riding horses and swinging swords around. The magic of Naming doesn't run into any of these narrative problems.
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Nov 2, 2012 05:08
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It's more than just the hard magic system not making sense with the level of technology they have. The entire University system is like a bizarre parody of the real world. That would be fine if this were a satire or a social commentary, but it's written completely straight. The knowledge they work with is known to cause students to break under pressure and minds to completely snap resulting in madmen with magical powers, and yet they still use public whippings as punishment even though psychology was a defined field that Kvothe mentioned and they seem to have decent mental health facilities. I'm expected to believe that no one has suggested that they stop causing extreme physical and mental trauma to students? One of the Masters is a complete shithead infamous for actively working against the progression of students who aren't complete sycophants and holds a lifelong grudge against someone who had the gall to be as smart as he was at a young age. This is known to all of the other masters and yet nothing is done to try and reign in his abuse of power. He also came across as incredibly stupid (and petty) for thinking he could trick a council of the most educated men in the world into believing his story when there was an entire lecture hall full of people who could attest to the contrary. It's every bad cliche of the world's worst professors rolled into one. Let's also not forget that he's completely loving bloodthirsty. Try to imagine what Kvothe must have looked like after his first week of classes. He spent the majority of his adolescence being regularly beaten and surviving on rotten scraps. It's even mentioned in the scene where he gets stitched up how incredibly skinny he is. If Master Dickhead had gotten his way, Kvothe would have died, but until Kvothe mentioned the room full of witnesses that could back him up, none of the other masters batted an eye at a dozen lashes. Why is the food so awful? This seems nitpicky, but it really underscores why this comes across as a satire of American college life. These guys are paying exorbitant fees in tuition on a bimonthly basis. Surely some of that could be spared for decent food. Someone must have figured out that good nutrition leads to healthy people, which in turn means better students. Again, they're constantly worried about mental breakdowns, but they feed the students poo poo! They go through the entire examination and tuition interview process every two months. All research and work is being done manually, right? When the hell do they have time to get anything else done? So as a parody of the American college experience, it works perfectly. You have the crusty old dean, unnecessarily cruel punishments, terrible food, cramped living conditions, arbitrary barriers to advancement, and tuition rates that only the super elite can easily afford. And we're expected to believe that this system has not only existed, but flourished for centuries!
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Nov 2, 2012 06:22
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I don't really want to defend Rothfuss because yes, I think there are lots of holes in the world. Any reasonably detailed world that's explained to a greater degree than "magic does stuff" is going to be plot hole central. But in the spirit of maybe rehabilitating him at least a little bit... harsh punishments for people who are liable to snap at any time and commit suicide, infamous shitheads in positions of great authority who are ignored or even trusted by people at their level in the hierarchy, awful food despite a massive budget, and constant progress reviews that would seem to prevent you from getting anything done sound exactly like the American military which exists in real life, so I'm not sure it's impossible to imagine an institution like this existing in some crazy fictional universe that Rothfuss has created.
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Nov 2, 2012 06:29
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Well, at least with the American military there are a ton of fingers in the pot pulling things in different directions so much so that one area may not actually have any idea what another is doing to explain it. It's also not like the budget is unaccounted for. Exactly where is the money in the University going? How much do these masters earn? What's the upkeep like there? They're not producing fighter jets. They're not maintaining aircraft carriers. The quantity of money being discussed in a single student's tuition is enough to feed a family for a year or more in some circumstances. How is the world able to sustain that much money being funneled into one place? Part of the US military's problem is that the soldiers are also seen as disposable. Are we also supposed to think that students at the University are disposable? How many wealthy families exist in this world to supply a constant supply of new applicants to replace the ones being washed out every term? Edit: We're also aware of the problems in the US military and at least pay lip service to trying and improving the conditions. The way things are the University are just accepted at face value, which is exactly why it seems like satire of real world institutions. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Nov 2, 2012 |
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Nov 2, 2012 06:42
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Yeah I guess it sort of doesn't make much sense. Oh well.
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Nov 2, 2012 06:53
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Yeah I guess it sort of doesn't make much sense. Oh well. Honestly, it wouldn't bother me nearly as much as it does if there was a story to go along with the world building. The focal point becomes this world and how it works because there's not a plot running along with Kvothe's narrative.
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Nov 2, 2012 07:29
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The way I see it, the world can still be interesting even if it's not super coherent. Like, a book can have a very evocative, intriguing description of something even if, when you put it under a microscope, it doesn't hold together. If that sort of thing bothers you, then yes, it will hurt the book. If you're able to suspend disbelief, though, the book can still be good. I'm not really sure what determines when I'm able to suspend disbelief and when I'm not, but I do know that it has been a long time since a book or movie has bothered me with an inconsistency. Film Critic Hulk's thoughts about plot holes in movies are fairly close to mine. I'm not really looking for an academic essay on the world of... whatever it's called in The Name of the Wind. Middle Earth version 2 or whatever.
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Nov 2, 2012 07:36
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I suspend disbelief so long as what I get out of the story is thematically consistent. I'm not too worried if all of the parts don't line up just right so long as it's clear that the holes are allowing the author to write a better story. However, holes bother me when they're unnecessary or are there for convenience. The problem with the holes in The Name of the Wind is that they come across as artificial just to work against Kvothe rather than seeming like organic parts of the world. On top of that, there's no plot. Kvothe just does stuff or stuff happens to him, but nothing feels narratively related. So far, it's just a sequence of events. This is why I'm giving up on the series after the first book. There's an entire novel full of weird inconsistencies in the world that the author is building but accepting them and moving on doesn't leave me with a fulfilling story. Those plot holes aren't serving an overall theme. I don't feel like Rothfuss has something important to tell me that those plot holes are assisting.
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Nov 2, 2012 08:11
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Haraksha posted:The quantity of money being discussed in a single student's tuition is enough to feed a family for a year or more in some circumstances. How is the world able to sustain that much money being funneled into one place? Hah... funny you should mention that, but I'm paying 10-grand a year for my son's boarding ALONE, at a state college in which he's a resident. I KNOW my wife and I don't spend more than 75% of that on groceries, and we don't try to be thrifty. TychoCelchuuu posted:The way I see it, the world can still be interesting even if it's not super coherent. Like, a book can have a very evocative, intriguing description of something even if, when you put it under a microscope, it doesn't hold together. If that sort of thing bothers you, then yes, it will hurt the book. If you're able to suspend disbelief, though, the book can still be good. I'm not really sure what determines when I'm able to suspend disbelief and when I'm not, but I do know that it has been a long time since a book or movie has bothered me with an inconsistency. Film Critic Hulk's thoughts about plot holes in movies are fairly close to mine. I'm not really looking for an academic essay on the world of... whatever it's called in The Name of the Wind. Middle Earth version 2 or whatever. I'm with you on this, and I actually enjoy the magic mechanics of the world.
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Nov 2, 2012 13:08
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I think a whole lot of the money goes toward  and sending people out into the world to find books/other strange things and bringing them back. Think of it as the funding for a secret adventure club. That and the transport cost of some of the supplies has out be outrageous with crappy roads and no trains.Also if they don't keep the poor people out the rich people would not want to go to that dirty school with poor people. Class has a whole bunch to do with everything at the school. If you are a professor or not you have to think about who you are offending by saying things to/about certain rich people who would hire some one to kill you/your family for honor.
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Nov 2, 2012 15:52
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Fallorn posted:I think a whole lot of the money goes toward But they don't actually need the rich people to attend. They need smart people to attend. Most wealthy folk only go for a few terms before washing out. Things would be far less precarious if they just sold highly convenient devices to the wealthy at super high prices while letting the intelligent people continue to make advances. Kynetx posted:Hah... funny you should mention that, but I'm paying 10-grand a year for my son's boarding ALONE, at a state college in which he's a resident. I KNOW my wife and I don't spend more than 75% of that on groceries, and we don't try to be thrifty. $10,000 for boarding, I'm assuming that includes a room, right? I guess I'm curious what kind of setup he's got. When I was in college, it was actually far more affordable to rent an apartment and buy groceries than to live in the dorms and use a meal plan. The situation in the book is the opposite of that. The dorms and lousy food the school provide are actually the affordable ones. Either way, the way college education is set up in America right now is leading to a lot of social strain and bad financing. Their world doesn't seem to have all of the same institutions as ours, but the loans have been used to utterly ruin people. It's exactly why I said it comes across as satire. The problem is that reading it as satire doesn't do anything for the story. And I don't inherently dislike the mechanics of the magic system. I just think if you're going to have hard and fast rules for magic, you have to take them to their logical extremes and if you don't, there need to be good explanations as to why things stopped where they did. What exactly is holding these people back? This is why Brandon Sanderson is such a great writer. He answers those questions, often times by leaving holes out in the open, and then revealing that that's the major plot of the book. Maybe Rothfuss is playing a really slow burn and he's going to totally pull the rug out from under us. That would actually be interesting.
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Nov 2, 2012 16:42
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TychoCelchuuu posted:The way I see it, the world can still be interesting even if it's not super coherent. Like, a book can have a very evocative, intriguing description of something even if, when you put it under a microscope, it doesn't hold together. If that sort of thing bothers you, then yes, it will hurt the book. If you're able to suspend disbelief, though, the book can still be good. I'm not really sure what determines when I'm able to suspend disbelief and when I'm not, but I do know that it has been a long time since a book or movie has bothered me with an inconsistency. Film Critic Hulk's thoughts about plot holes in movies are fairly close to mine. I'm not really looking for an academic essay on the world of... whatever it's called in The Name of the Wind. Middle Earth version 2 or whatever. I agree with you that there's a lot of stupid nitpicking in this thread and it's hurt the overall debate, like the dude up there who pointed out that the university charges more than an average person's income per year. Way to be dumb, dude. Likewise it's not a requirement to have a small treatise at the back of each book on the magic system. We're reading a novel, not a What Film Crit Hulk is saying, I think, is that for the sake of the narrative the audience can overlook, or accept, a few plot holes and inconsistencies. The trouble with Patrick Rothfuss is that the characters are two-dimensional, their relationships are mostly uninteresting, the world is generic and the romance is frankly repulsive, so what incentive do I have to overlook the plot holes? If you're saying that examining the inconsistencies is keeping us from understanding and appreciating the overall message of the book then you'll have to work a little harder to expand upon your idea of why the book is so interesting to you. This also speaks to the heart of why I think the "Kvothe is a liar" twist is ultimately irrelevant. It's interesting to think about the possibility that everything Kvothe is telling us is wrong, and that the portions of the first two books that deal with the past are mostly fabrication. Even if that turns out to be true, a bad story made up by an interesting character with complex motivations is still a bad story. If the third book comes out, and Kvothe admits that his past was a lie, then the university chapters of the first two books will still be a flat, boring parody of a college life crossed with magic and more than a little wish fulfillment, and it won't make them more fun to read.
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Nov 2, 2012 19:38
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Prop Wash posted:I agree with you that there's a lot of stupid nitpicking in this thread and it's hurt the overall debate, like the dude up there who pointed out that the university charges more than an average person's income per year. Way to be dumb, dude. Likewise it's not a requirement to have a small treatise at the back of each book on the magic system. We're reading a novel, not a I think you missed my point on the cost of the University completely. Obviously, that's exactly how it is in America. It becomes an on the nose parody. Reading the book as parody doesn't improve the story, so what benefit is there in the book to making it that way other than to act as an artificial barrier on Kvothe personally. No one else seems to have any trouble with it. It's a Kvothe problem even though it should have far reaching implications. Yes, we hear about loan sharks and the like, but we don't see the consequences of these things. They're brought in exclusively to be problems for Kvothe to deal with. It makes the story come across like a console RPG. Kvothe has to deal with these little sidequests that should be causing problems for everyone, but really are just waiting for him to activate the quest. As for the magic system, the author doesn't have to explain all the ins and outs of it, but every time they go to the trouble of making the rules clear, it's begging the reader to ask why things aren't done differently. I totally agree with GRRM on this aspect. Magic should be used in small amounts to spice up a story. Unless you happen to be Brandon Sanderson, it's best to just leave it alone. Had he left it at the vague powers of Naming, it wouldn't be begging for people to ask, "Well, why the gently caress don't they do X, Y, and Z?" Edit: And all of my responses lately have been aimed specifically at the idea that The Name of the Wind has interesting world building. It's a weird hodgepodge of things Rothfuss thought would be interesting in a fantasy setting that are more or less lifted wholesale from our world with a twist (Alchemy and Chemistry only share a building) with plot convenient devices stapled on and a variety of magic systems that he didn't really think through. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 02:35
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I'm not sure if you're aware that he literally wrote this story while he was a penniless college student and published it with minimal structural changes.
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Nov 3, 2012 04:37
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Above Our Own posted:I'm not sure if you're aware that he literally wrote this story while he was a penniless college student and published it with minimal structural changes. I'm aware. Do the conditions under which he wrote the story make it more interesting?The story has to stand on its own merits. I can't even tell you how many creative writing teachers told me, "Don't write something just because it really happened or it's based in fact. Write something that's actually interesting."
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Nov 3, 2012 04:55
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Haraksha posted:I'm aware. Do the conditions under which he wrote the story make it more interesting?The story has to stand on its own merits. I can't even tell you how many creative writing teachers told me, "Don't write something just because it really happened or it's based in fact. Write something that's actually interesting." Someone finds all of this interesting, otherwise Rothfuss's books wouldn't have shown up on the NYT bestsellers list. I'd say Rothfuss took similar advice to heart and made a boatload of money off of it.
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Nov 3, 2012 06:31
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Haraksha posted:I'm aware. Do the conditions under which he wrote the story make it more interesting?The story has to stand on its own merits. I can't even tell you how many creative writing teachers told me, "Don't write something just because it really happened or it's based in fact. Write something that's actually interesting."
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Nov 3, 2012 06:36
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Above Our Own posted:Uh you misunderstand me completely. I am not justifying any of the authorial problems in the book. You seem to think I'm implying that the book should be given some kind of leniency for some reason. I've said repeatedly in this thread that I think one of Rothfuss' major mistakes as a writer was choosing to hold on to his angst-ridden college fantasy escapism story instead of creating something new with more technical maturity. (That's kind of a bad example because in The Color of Magic you could sort of see the brilliance, but it just wasn't there yet, whereas Rothfuss can write and think up wacky fantasy stuff, but he can't do either with any sort of maturity, and maturity's not really something you can just hone over time. On the other hand, maturity sometimes does come just with growing older so maybe that will happen.)
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Nov 3, 2012 06:51
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Ornamented Death posted:Someone finds all of this interesting, otherwise Rothfuss's books wouldn't have shown up on the NYT bestsellers list. I'd say Rothfuss took similar advice to heart and made a boatload of money off of it. Honestly, it comes across as the male version of Twilight to me. Wouldn't it be awesome to be Kvothe. He's smarter than everyone. He's great at everything he does. Women swoon for him. And he can play Selling well isn't really any kind of indication of quality. Compare The Name of the Wind to Elantris, Sanderson's first published book. Even if the story is a little slow to get started and the language isn't great, everything is internally consistent and there aren't glaring holes in how his societies would actually function. Aside from that, the characters are actually interesting, especially the villain. Though it would later turn out that Sanderson can only write one woman, it was fun the first time. Above Our Own posted:Uh you misunderstand me completely. I am not justifying any of the authorial problems in the book. You seem to think I'm implying that the book should be given some kind of leniency for some reason. I've said repeatedly in this thread that I think one of Rothfuss' major mistakes as a writer was choosing to hold on to his angst-ridden college fantasy escapism story instead of creating something new with more technical maturity. My mistake! I wasn't sure if you were implying he should be given leniency, the books really are a parody of American college life, or if you were agreeing with me.
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Nov 3, 2012 07:56
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Then again that was like the 12th novel sanderson wrote. First one to get published. Every time he poops he comes out of the bathroom with a chapter finished. Every long plane ride he has most of a novel.
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Nov 3, 2012 15:21
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Exactly. The first thing he published wasn't the first thing he wrote and was more mature for it.
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Nov 3, 2012 15:23
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Fallorn posted:Then again that was like the 12th novel sanderson wrote. First one to get published. Every time he poops he comes out of the bathroom with a chapter finished. Every long plane ride he has most of a novel. Hence the italics. Sanderson certainly loves the first book he wrote, but he knew better than to try and get it published right away. He's been sitting on it for years and still intends to go back to it someday, but it will be nearly unrecognizable from the draft he wrote the first time around.
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Nov 4, 2012 06:20
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Sanderson is a lot more matured as a writer in many areas but I don't think he's a good contrast. His books are full of the same seriously idiotic choices on the part of the characters that make suspension of disbelief really difficult. His characters are even more one-dimensional than Rothfuss and mainly serve as talking plot advancers that individually could be swapped around or dropped without affecting the ultra-formulaic narratives in any way. Sanderson has his ducks in a row and is extremely prolific but I don't think that he is very good at creating anything interesting. Rothfuss is, in my opinion, an extremely talented writer who seems hamstrung by his inability to take criticism or let go of something he likes when it isn't working. There's a lot of qualities that I think make his work unique and deeply readable, like I've touched on repeatedly in here. For Sanderson, the most I can say is he writes a lot of books and doesn't have creepy views on women.
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Nov 4, 2012 07:22
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Haraksha posted:$10,000 for boarding, I'm assuming that includes a room, right? I guess I'm curious what kind of setup he's got. When I was in college, it was actually far more affordable to rent an apartment and buy groceries than to live in the dorms and use a meal plan. The situation in the book is the opposite of that. The dorms and lousy food the school provide are actually the affordable ones. A room he has to himself (unfortunately, I was voted down in insisting that a roommate wasn't that much of a hardship by a group of people who aren't paying the rent) with standard amenities like Cat5 Ethernet, board, etc. Could be the local area has more favorable rents, but he's just a freshman and not experienced with renting and all that.
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Nov 6, 2012 01:06
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If the librarian is an Amyr or a Ciridae or whatever has been implied, it's possible the entire university is just a front to fund some other organization that no one even knows about and contain the knowledge in it expressly for hindering technological progress. The thing with trying to apply logic to this world based on our world is that this world has basically been created explicitly by and for hidden supernatural entities who we know remain present in the world which may be shaping events to their own desires. And if that's true, it's not like Rothfuss hasn't played fair in hinting that possibility to the readers. So when someone says "but why is it like this" everyone can say "magic and history to be further revealed later" and it's like okay, I guess that's possible. The story isn't over yet after all. Will it be satisfyingly concluded? That I would not wager on. Sophia fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Nov 6, 2012 |
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Nov 6, 2012 15:24
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Sophia posted:So when someone says "but why is it like this" everyone can say "magic and history to be further revealed later" and it's like okay, I guess that's possible. The story isn't over yet after all. As someone already said, this would be fine if the narrative being told was actually one worth reading. Kvothe's life story is incredibly dull. For all the adversity, for all the triumphs and failures, there's not really much to it. There's no glue linking the little anecdotes of how awesome, and tough, and brave, and smart he is. Stuff happens, but there's no plot. There are characters, but there's no depth. A twist without the rest is just a twist, and why should we care?
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Nov 7, 2012 15:44
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