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I liked... uh... The cloak weaving stuff wasn't bad. And that's where we learned the story about the moon or whatever? It's been a while since I read the book but I remember liking that. Anything that has nothing to do with Kvothe in these books is typically not bad.
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Nov 18, 2012 02:25
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Yeah, those two things and the Cthaeh are the only [good] things I recall from the Felurian segment. [edit]
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Nov 18, 2012 02:29
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The Cthaeh is definitely a potentially interesting plot device. A nigh-omniscient, malevolent being that uses its near-infinite foresight to cause the maximum amount of misery possible presents some compelling narrative options.
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Nov 18, 2012 03:49
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pogothemonkey0 posted:Yeah, he definitely falls under my category of guilty pleasure fantasy. Please don't quote that out of context. I like reading good deep literature but sometimes it is fun to sit at home all day and burn through a book as fun to read as The Name of the Wind. Yeah, I liked it a ton. Well, other than the sex stuff, that was all fairly stupid, but not like offensively stupid, just wasted space. I just kind of skimmed over the parts where it's talking about nipples or something, and actually read the parts where she's talking about something substantive, which is fairly often from memory--I don't really recall multiple paragraphs in a row talking about the sweet angle he got on his dick that blasted her g-spot or anything, but maybe I just blocked/skimmed it. I feel like the sexual vibe actually fits well, it's just way, way too blatant and hamfisted, the difference between a pencil skirt and a Penthouse spread. Really though, it's more about the atmosphere than the ... plot? The dreamy neon technicolor quality, and extra poetic (and still fantastic) prose was what was enjoyable for me anyway. And although it was about faeries, it was about weird-gently caress-you-up-eat-your-brain-with-a-spoon faeries, and not prancing sissies that are blah blah oh so pretty and graceful. I've heard the Denna/fantasy heroin section described as eating honey with your brain, and if that's so, Felurian and the Fae is like snorting rainbow sherbert with ambien sprinkles. And Cthaeh is super-interesting. Absolute malice and near-omniscience is great, but constraining it with an actual almost total impotence takes a generic antagonist and turns it into an interesting character in its own right, something that the Chandrian, for all that the book's spent a lot more time on them, just doesn't seem to have. I wouldn't be disappointed at all if Cthaeh turned out to be the primary. wellwhoopdedooo fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Nov 18, 2012 |
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Nov 18, 2012 05:16
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I actually liked a good deal of that section as well. The sex-god stuff was just juvenile and made me think of him less as a person/writer. However, I liked that the fey realm was not where giant mushrooms grew and sprites flitted about but actually had very creepy and dark elements. I found the scenes leading to the construction of the cloak to be very atmospheric. Also, I really don't think the Cthaeh will be the "primary" at all. I think he is a very unique and interesting chracter as well but I think he serves more as a symbol of the stories' themes of inevitable self-destruction. The novels are very conventional when it comes to fantasy tropes and I have trouble believing the ultimate villian will not be *the one(s) who killed my parents*. My main problem with the Cthaeh plotline though is that it created only a few resolutions to Kvothe's story as I see it. 1: He got hosed and is destined to ruin his life(the world?) because an omniscient tree monkey made it so. 2: He somehow prevails against that supposedly inevitable fate against all logic/fairy law. 3: It is left unclear if he is actually doomed and the story ends ambiguously. Given that Kvothe is the super-awesome chosen-one, I think Rothfuss will probably write option 2. That would be kind of lame considering how gloomy the themes he has developed are. 1 and 3 are far more interesting on to me on paper but, at the same time, I don't think he is capable enough of a writer to make the other two options feel real or meaningful.
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Nov 18, 2012 06:01
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Holy poo poo, some people hated these books. Is it because Kvothe is too  ? This is a serious question because I love them and so do 100% of the people who I have recommended these to, so I was unprepared to find a different opinion.
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Nov 19, 2012 01:41
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MoreLikeTen posted:Holy poo poo, some people hated these books. Is it because Kvothe is too It has less to do with Kvothe being super special because there's a greater than zero chance he's an unreliable narrator. The problem is that the story Kvothe is relating, true or not, is completely uninteresting. Things happen, but there's not a plot. Other than through the title of the series, there's nothing in the first 400 pages that motivates the story forward. At least, that's how I feel.
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Nov 19, 2012 01:44
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I enjoyed every bit of them both and anxiously await the next book. I love Kvothe as a character but I can see some of the distain for the second book.
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Nov 19, 2012 01:49
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MoreLikeTen posted:Holy poo poo, some people hated these books. Is it because Kvothe is too Meandering, unfocused plot. Denna. Reddit-style views on women/relationships. Self-insert Mary Sue "I'm in love with my main character he's SOOOOO awesome" *wank wank wank* 40 pages of Anime Sex Fairy. Angsty college nerd revenge fantasy. Strained suspension of disbelief through lovely worldbuilding. Denna. 40 pages of Anime Sex Ninjas. Before you paint me as unilaterally hating the book, keep in mind that I could put together a similar list of things I think Rothfuss did really well. But some combination of the above is usually why.
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Nov 19, 2012 03:10
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The thing with me is that The Name of the Wind was just so drat good, I hardly noticed the flaws. It was just a joy to read. The Wise Man's Fears has its momentum completely stall out as soon as Kvothe leaves The University. After that it just goes from slow and uninteresting to slow but interesting to pretty great to really dumb with sprinkles of neat things to really worse to things are looking up then the book ends. Even the early University stuff was starting to drag. There's only so much you can dedicate to Kvothe having money problems and having a pissing contest with an equally arrogant prick. It was fun in The Name of the Wind because Kvothe was getting wise to the world and saw that every place had its bullies and you had to rise above the hurdles they threw at you.
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Nov 19, 2012 03:18
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Above Our Own posted:lovely characterization. Of this list the one I can really sympathize with is Denna. Holy hell, get over her. But reddit level views on women? Where specifically do you see this? I think if there's any reddit outlook on a specific relationship, it would be in the Eragon books (which, to my eternal shame and regret, I finished). Obviously, someone else being worse doesn't excuse anything, but I really did not pick up on a niceguy vibe. I see that this list is comprised of things I don't pay attention to, seeing as I'm in it for the Sympathy Music storytelling/narration history tidbits watching his shoestring budget with extreme anxiety
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Nov 19, 2012 03:23
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MoreLikeTen posted:Of this list the one I can really sympathize with is Denna. Holy hell, get over her. But reddit level views on women? Where specifically do you see this? I think if there's any reddit outlook on a specific relationship, it would be in the Eragon books (which, to my eternal shame and regret, I finished). Obviously, someone else being worse doesn't excuse anything, but I really did not pick up on a niceguy vibe. Sorry, could you clarify this? It kind of sounds like you're saying "yes, there are a lot of flaws, but if you don't look at them, it's a really good book." I couldn't really enjoy the shoestring budget aspect because he just kind of seemed to get money from everywhere whenever he needed it.
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Nov 19, 2012 04:36
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I'm saying that I found the book very engaging for the reasons I indicated. Because of this, I didn't really notice flaws that others have. I wanted other people to point them out for me, so I could give them some thought.
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Nov 19, 2012 05:15
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The Ferretbrain Review is pretty good at summarizing what's the matter with it.
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Nov 19, 2012 06:02
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Wise Man's Fear lacked in the cool varied in-world stories that were so abundant in TNOTW. I only remember the one about Jax and maybe a single Adem story. I still ran though TWMF and enjoyed it for what is was. Don't get me started with Denna, but she was only in like 60 some pages total between both books. Still eagerly awaiting the next one despite flaws. Thread sub-title should be: Evil spirits killed my family, need money for magic and Kung Fu lessons. Enrico Cocinar fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Nov 19, 2012 |
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Nov 19, 2012 06:49
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anathenema posted:The Ferretbrain Review is pretty good at summarizing what's the matter with it. The section on the Felurian here is brutal and perfectly sums up my issues with it.
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Nov 19, 2012 08:49
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anathenema posted:The Ferretbrain Review is pretty good at summarizing what's the matter with it. There's a lot of stuff in here I agree with, a majority really, but there are a handful of things I disagree with, the biggest being that Rothfuss writes too many words. This is definitely a personal viewpoint, but I really love the world of this trilogy and get totally engrossed in it so I like the wordiness. He might write about the wrong parts, but even that I'm not so sure about - the reviewer complains about the things that are focused on (and believe me, I hear him on a lot of the repeated themes and character-types), but he complains about how they are the less important bits, when I'm pretty sure that his conversations with Ambrose and Elodin and the like are somewhat the key to the book's conclusion. One thing that I can't complain about with Rothfuss is the way he layers in narrative clues within scenes. I'm not sure that he's ever had a non-transition scene that didn't have a point to the overall world mysteries, even if it's silly faerie sex. I'm also not as critical of the Adem section. But something that I thought was interesting was that he complained that Kvothe got a lot of skills but didn't learn anything when I thought that was kind of the whole point. Kvothe brings about the end of the world (or the current state of it) because he doesn't actually learn anything from what he does. He's so busy being clever that he only learns the outside instead of the inside of life. Without the last book I suppose we don't know, but I always assumed that was the central theme here.
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Nov 19, 2012 12:43
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It's funny-odd reading that review and noticing how charitable my first interpretation of everything in WMF was. I got hooked by NOTW and just wanted to know how it all ended, so I read WMF with my brain on "cool, what's next?" I can look at all the bad points of the writing and list the ways I find to excuse or rationalize them, but that's a far cry from proving that they aren't bad points. I do think his criticism of the Kvothe's time in the Ademre slightly misses the mark. We've seen over and over again that Kvothe's true superpower is being really clever, and he's deceived an awful lot of people in the course of the series. He always does it because he thinks he knows best, of course, and it usually turns out he does. So when Ferretbrain complains about how they teach him their philosophy and fighting techniques even though he doesn't truly get it, I think it can all be explained by the fact that Kvothe, like Clarence in True Romance, bullshitted them. In most of his other strengths, he eventually meets someone better, but I don't think we ever meet a better liar than Kvothe. (Unless it's Denna, which would be awesome.) This is OK only insofar as book three shows us a Kvothe whose accumulation of power without wisdom goes horribly awry and turns him into the broken man we see in the most recent time frame. If somehow it turns out that being a lying, manipulating, rear end in a top hat power-hungry teenager was all part of his incredibly brilliant master plan for revenge and getting laid, I will assuredly join the ranks of the haters. Also, re Denna, I think Rothfuss earns a few points back late in the game when she points out that she allows herself to be mistreated by men for exactly the same reasons that Kvothe has allowed himself to be whipped. It's hardly a strong feminist message but it's a brief peek outside Kvothe's teenage dipshit point of view, one that suggests that while the PoV character barely recognizes that other people have agency, the author does.
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Nov 19, 2012 16:52
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Zorak of Michigan posted:
If I were in that position, I would have regarded her as beyond my grasp pretty early on and just gone on with my life, though I have to concede that it makes sense in a story to have a woman to strive for.
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Nov 19, 2012 22:49
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You're also a lot smarter than Kvothe when it comes to romantic relationships. Much of how we can think about what happens in the first two books is going to hinge on whether in the third book Rothfuss makes it clear that Kvothe is somewhere between "oblivious" and "shitstain" when it comes to his ideas about what a relationship should be, or whether Rothfuss instead takes Kvothe's narration and treats it as the gospel truth or at least as not obviously troubling.
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Nov 19, 2012 23:02
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Also Denna is going to end up being magical and an agent (possibly unknowing) of evil who consciously ensnared Kvothe into being fascinated with her, meaning that his creepy white knight obsession is not going to be his fault. So there's that.
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Nov 19, 2012 23:59
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MoreLikeTen posted:But reddit level views on women? Where specifically do you see this?
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Nov 20, 2012 00:30
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Above Our Own posted:In his implicit justification of the Nice Guy friend-zoned PUA bullshit stereotype through Kvothe. And if you think it's just the character and not the author, check out this classy blog post.
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Nov 20, 2012 01:14
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Above Our Own posted:In his implicit justification of the Nice Guy friend-zoned PUA bullshit stereotype through Kvothe. And if you think it's just the character and not the author, check out this classy blog post.  TychoCelchuuu posted:It's precisely that kind of poo poo that makes me worry that much of what Kvothe says is what Rothfuss thinks is correct. I mean on the one hand you have an evil tree that Bast straight up says turns Kvothe's entire life into a horrible hosed up tragedy where everything is terrible, but the on the other hand you have the author himself being... pretty weird, not just in that blog post but in other posts that I don't feel like tracking down because it makes me feel yucky. So I don't know what to think! I guess I'll just have to hope that there is an element of unreliable narrator/ self awareness to the Denna sections. On a completely unrelated note, I was wondering about the segment where he is hanging out with rooftop girl and and they are talking about the Amyr. In that scene, she says something to the effect of "You are my Cirradae and beyond reproach." It totally felt like she was knighting him and that she's amyr. Am I just pulling this out of my rear end? I've been dying to ask someone.
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Nov 20, 2012 01:30
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Above Our Own posted:In his implicit justification of the Nice Guy friend-zoned PUA bullshit stereotype through Kvothe. And if you think it's just the character and not the author, check out this classy blog post. Ugh, that makes my skin crawl every time I see it.
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Nov 20, 2012 02:23
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It's skeezy, really skeezy, but he's so painfully genero-nerd that I don't know that I can hold it against him personally so much as I do against the fact that this is what passes for generic nerdity these days.
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Nov 20, 2012 02:42
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When did "nice guy" begin to become a legitimate point of view that was reinforced and considered valid? I mean, in middle school I thought I was a nice guy who deserved women, but I thought that that was just a super awkward phase everyone goes through then tries really hard to forget.
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Nov 20, 2012 04:21
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Patrick Rothfuss' blog reinforces the complete disillusion I felt with this series when I reached the comically bad Felurian sex bits. Rothfuss must have come under some flak for Kvothe's awful sexamathons, as he posted a fairly involved defence on his blog, the main thrust of which was that criticism of his sex scenes was just prudishness. He genuinely seemed to not understand that the sex in the novel is so terrible on so many levels, and it completely ruined my hope that Kvothe was intended to be an unlikeable liar.
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Nov 20, 2012 04:40
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What really cracks me up about his comment on fantasy readers being prudes is that ASoIF and stuff like it is what has been popular in the genre for awhile. I find it hard to believe that he'd be completely ignorant of that stuff being present, considering the most popular example has a tv series on HBO and all.
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Nov 20, 2012 05:52
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MoreLikeTen posted:I really did not pick up on a niceguy vibe. At one point he has a quote about Denna that's something like "I watched all the men that she was with and I laughed at them because they may possess her, but only I knew her spirit," or words to that effect. That entire relationship is friendzone bullshit, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that Rothfuss intended it to be seen as pathetic as it actually is. Which is kind of a drat shame, because I think it would be stellar if part of the growing-up story was him realizing that his way of thinking about her is patronizing and dehumanizing.
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Nov 20, 2012 19:59
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I think the one you're thinking of is: "I have known her longer, my smile said. True, you have been inside the circle of her arms, tasted her mouth, felt the warmth of her, and that is something I have never had. But there is a part of her that is only for me. You cannot touch it, no matter how hard you might try. And after she has left you I will still be here, making her laugh. My light shining in her. I will still be here long after she has forgotten your name." But my favorite will always be: "I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool." Niceguy.txt.
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Nov 20, 2012 20:14
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The next chapter has him giving her scribe a piggyback across the city.
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Nov 20, 2012 23:40
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Sophia posted:I think the one you're thinking of is: These passages in addition to the comparison of Denna to a jumpy deer that he has to sneak up on to not scare away, and his comparison of having sex with different women being like playing different instruments are really quite disturbing. I have some hope that the women's bodies are like instruments thing was supposed to interpreted by readers Kvothe being an idiot, but all the nice guy poo poo I just don't see being hand-waved away in the third book.
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Nov 21, 2012 00:14
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keiran_helcyan posted:These passages in addition to the comparison of Denna to a jumpy deer that he has to sneak up on to not scare away, and his comparison of having sex with different women being like playing different instruments are really quite disturbing. I have some hope that the women's bodies are like instruments thing was supposed to interpreted by readers Kvothe being an idiot, but all the nice guy poo poo I just don't see being hand-waved away in the third book. Something really bad definitely happens involving her. When the scribe first mentions her in the first book Kvothe gets furious and the mood in the room turns glacier. I'm assuming The guy at the academy who's like 7th in line for the throne/main antagonist who showed an interest in her becomes king and takes her in a prima noctis sense or has her jailed for refusing him etc. It's probably the impetus that makes Kvothe earn the Kingkiller title.
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Nov 21, 2012 00:33
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I mean, whatever happens, he's obviously not married to her and living happily ever after right now, so at least there's some kind of tragedy there. The question is whether it's just going to be garden variety tragedy or whether Kvothe is actually going to get called out by the narrative (or even by an actual character, like, say, Denna!) for his nice guy bullshit.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:25
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Not by Denna, you don't speak so glowingly about the girl who told you to gently caress off, you're being a creep-o.
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Nov 21, 2012 04:38
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neongrey posted:Not by Denna, you don't speak so glowingly about the girl who told you to gently caress off, you're being a creep-o.
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Nov 21, 2012 05:18
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I dunno, I always got a 'both Denna and Kvothe are hosed in the head when it comes to relationships' vibe off the whole thing. I mean, Kvothe's head over heels but I never felt like the text was pointing to this as a model for behavior. I think it was the end of WMF when Kvothe comes back all suave and I-hosed-a-fairy and Denna basically told him to shove it. And when he went all 'why do you let the bad men hurt you? Come to me and it'll all be okay.  ' she turned it on him with his own proudly (dickishly, arrogantly) displayed scars and he couldn't respond at all. Maybe I'm being generous, but Denna stands at the peak of Mount 'Kvothe is a clever but broken adolescent pretending to be a man' which is, to my mind, okay if that's what Rothfuss is shooting for. And he's been foreshadowing the gently caress out of a real tragedy in that brought it upon yourself sort of sense. Maybe some redemption at the end, but young Kvothe is not, I don't think, something we're expected to like so much as pity.
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Nov 21, 2012 10:45
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I don't think there's a lot of room in the extant narrative for the relationship to suddenly turn into a critique of the immature & dehumanizing views Kvothe has but if Rothfuss does this in the third book I'll be impressed. Pretty sure it's going to end up with Kvothe's obsessive views being justified in one way or another or at least being presented sympathetically.
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Nov 22, 2012 07:26
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Above Our Own posted:I don't think there's a lot of room in the extant narrative for the relationship to suddenly turn into a critique of the immature & dehumanizing views Kvothe has but if Rothfuss does this in the third book I'll be impressed. Sympathetically probably, if only in the 'he was 16 and stupid' sort of way. I don't think it's going to be a deep commentary, but it is there.
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Nov 22, 2012 08:11
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