Wittgen posted:

I was surprised by just how skilled Auri is. An alchemist so good she had her own well stocked private workroom.

PupsOfWar posted:

There are much better choices for people who enjoy purple prose, even within the fantasy genre. It is hard to admire him for the "And it was a silence of three parts," passage when there are authors like Mervyn Peake who are that lavishly descriptive on a consistent and cohesive basis. And that's without even getting into yer canonical Great Authors.

Benson Cunningham posted:

It's ridiculous that this book is $10 for kindle when its not a book- it's a novella.

Calidus posted:

well it sounds like we have a solution to getting the Door of Stone released faster...

wellwhoopdedooo posted:

I don't mean to be a dick here, but I've heard a lot about how good Prince of Thorns is, and, well... I'm not seeing it. There were a ton of interesting ideas, but they're never even satisfyingly explored, let alone fully. Any depth has to come from the reader since it's all just sketched out in the story at best. There's a LOT of books I'd recommend before Prince of Thorns if you like/kind of like Abercrombie. For starters:

R. Scott Bakker - Prince of Nothing
Richard K. Morgan - A Land Fit for Heroes
Glen Cook - The Black Company
Robin Hobb - At least the first two cycles, I've got two to go
Peter V. Brett - The Demon Cycle
Daniel Abraham - Just all of it
Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora (I think this is going to go to interesting places but right now it's mostly potential)
Kevin Hearne - The Iron Druid (this is at the bottom but goddamn it's a great palette cleanser between other series and I really enjoy reading it)

List is in very rough order of dark as gently caress and deep -> interesting and different -> occasionally gritty pulp that's fun to read. But honestly, Prince of Thorns didn't impress me at all, start to finish. And I didn't pick that turn of phrase to try to be a dick--I just wasn't impressed with how it started, with the body, and especially with how it ended, and only after a quick check did I realize that I used the exact same phrase as you. Maybe it was just in my head from reading your post. Anyway. Did not like. Thought it was shallow, nothing new, tried too hard to be dark, didn't justify character progression enough and still managed to change the main character way too much at the end. Which also pretty much came out of nowhere.

Wittgen posted:

I'm pretty sure Rothfuss now writes full time. Regardless, saying a guy who worked on his book for over a decade is in the writing game for the money is ridiculous. I agree with Srice that good discussion doesn't have to be purely positive, but baseless trash talk is not good discussion.

I really liked Slow Regard of Silent Things. After reading it, I feel Rothfuss did not overdue his warnings in introduction at all. It is weird. It is nothing like the Kingkiller books. Given how fantasy fans can be waiting for the next installment of a series, I can see why he was borderline aggressive about making sure people would know what they were getting into before reading it. That said, I thought it was really good. A lot of lovely sentences, and Auri's intense personification of everything around her is endearing and tragic.

I liked having a POV character who actually knows what's what in the world. Kvothe tends to be ignorant of anything important going around him, but Auri knows what's up. She just has such a different perspective on the world that she doesn't care about most of things we'd care about.

I was surprised by just how skilled Auri is. An alchemist so good she had her own well stocked private workroom. And at the end, was that naming or shaping? The way it was described as forcing her desires on the world along with the fact that she didn't think some professor knew about it made me think shaping, but it naming is such a more obvious answer. We have only seen hints of shaping in the main books.

penultimate paragraph of Slow Regard of Silent Things posted:

But for him it was a different thing entire. For him she would bring forth all her desire. She would call up all her cunning and craft. Then she would make a name for him.

wellwhoopdedooo posted:

Another piece of the puzzle here, I think. Maybe Auri helped Kvothe keep his word.

StoneOfShame posted:

This didn't occur to me at first but I like it or she actually helps him become Kote and go into hiding she has offered him sanctuary already.

Solice Kirsk posted:

So we're all in agreement that Kvothe changed his real name and thats why he sucks at magic and everything now right?

Effigy posted:

There's a part in one of the books, can't recall now, after the fire at the fishery. The professor guy quotes something in his own language, which translated to 'Expect disaster every seven years'. One of the words was 'Kote'. Wouldn't be surprised if Kvothe changed his name to disaster, and that's why his poo poo's all hosed up now.

quote:

“Do you know the saying ‘Chan Vaen edan Kote’?”
I tried to puzzle it out. “Seven years…I don’t know Kote.”
“‘Expect disaster every seven years,’” he said.

ulmont posted:

It's in The Name of the Wind, at page 495 (Chapter 67).

adamarama posted:

I really enjoyed Brett and lynch. The first black company trilogy was good but I thought the later stuff was a bit off the wall. Still, kudos to cook for trying something new.

Odette posted:

Just re-reading the series, where I stumbled upon the bit with Meluan Lackless reminding Kvothe of someone, her hating Edema Ruh, and later in the book, Kvothe reads one of these letters stating that the elder Lackless sister was disowned for running off with a troupe.

Flipped through the first book, and I'm fairly certain that Kvothe's mother is the elder Lackless sister.

M_Gargantua posted:

Almost completely disagree. The time lines and locations differ to much to match.

However the descriptions of Meluan use the same adjectives and points of focus (neck, lips) as Denna. Hence, Netalia Lackless is Dennas mother

Dienes posted:

Except you are forgetting the entire song about Netalia.

quote:

Seven things has Lady Lackless
Keeps them underneath her black dress
One a ring that's not for wearing
One a sharp word, not for swearing
Right beside her husband's candle
There's a door without a handle
In a box, no lid or locks
Lackless keeps her husband's rocks
There's a secret she's been keeping
She's been dreaming and not sleeping
On a road that's not for traveling
Lackless likes her riddle raveling.

quote:

In a box, no lid or locks
Lackless keeps her husband's rocks

Boing posted:

There's a scene in the first book where Kvothe haggles with a horse dealer to buy a horse and it could easily have been a sentence or two about how he bought a horse and rode to Treybin.

BananaNutkins posted:

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is Rothfuss' third stand-alone release, after smash hit The Name of the Wind (tight prose, decent story, bit of a mary sue protag), and its follow up Wise Man's Fear(so-so prose, terrible story, full blown mary sue protag), which also sold like gangbusters.

It is easily the worst thing I have ever read.

I'm not saying this lightly. It soundly beats Peter David's (aka David Peter) Psi-man:Deathscape as the most painful piece of writing I've endured. Part of what makes it so, so bad is that it thinks very highly of itself. Condescension oozes from of every line.

The foreword warns readers that this book is not like his other books, and that only special people who "love words and mysteries and secrets. For those curious about Alchemy and the Underthing. For those who wish to understand the hidden turnings of my world..."

This is emperor's new clothes-esque appeal is the most compelling thing in the book.

The other 156 pages are entirely ENTIRELY composed of stuff that should be cut from any other story. Chapter 1-5 is this:

Chapter 1 Auri gets out of bed and combs her hair
Chater 2 Auri takes a walk and then a bath
Chapter 3 Auri eats
Chapter 4 Auri does home repairs
Chapter 5 Auri picks out a gift and goes for another walk

There is nothing else. Rothfuss tries to carry it on prose alone, and he just isn't that talented. No one is. And it doesn't get any better from there.

There's no dialog. No plot. I cannot stress this enough. I'm completely and utterly dumbfounded that its possible to write for 156 pages and not say or do anything. Not to mention get it published afterwords.

If you want to read 156 pages of character actions, this is the book for you--opening doors, picking stuff up and putting it in other places, long walks and vague descriptions of pipes and poorly lit passageways. Twee observations about found objects and the anthropomorphization of those objects by the most infuriatingly twee protagonist of all time.

I thought I was just having a bad reaction to the book, so I sat on my feelings for awhile before writing this. Maybe I have a case of hype-backlash? But no.

The only faster nose-dive in quality and career trajectory has been Peter V. Brett's. If this is representative of Rothfuss' current quality standard, I expect his next book to leave a crater.

BananaNutkins posted:

If you want to read 156 pages of character actions, this is the book for you--opening doors, picking stuff up and putting it in other places, long walks and vague descriptions of pipes and poorly lit passageways. Twee observations about found objects and the anthropomorphization of those objects by the most infuriatingly twee protagonist of all time.

I thought I was just having a bad reaction to the book, so I sat on my feelings for awhile before writing this. Maybe I have a case of hype-backlash? But no.

The only faster nose-dive in quality and career trajectory has been Peter V. Brett's. If this is representative of Rothfuss' current quality standard, I expect his next book to leave a crater.

Boing posted:

I haven't read The Slow Regard, but I found myself getting frustrated with Rothfuss and his obsessive over-description of every single thing that happens in a scene, every word spoken and every action made, which is made all the more ludicrous by it nominally being a framing story told from person to person. He seems to have a stubborn reluctance to zoom out and describe anything at a larger scale. There's a scene in the first book where Kvothe haggles with a horse dealer to buy a horse and it could easily have been a sentence or two about how he bought a horse and rode to Treybin. I really wanted him to work on his pace and know when to leave the little details alone, but then I realised that if he did that there would be nothing left of the book. His writing is almost entirely comprised of minutiae. So it sounds like he's going totally the wrong way.

Boing posted:

I haven't read The Slow Regard, but I found myself getting frustrated with Rothfuss and his obsessive over-description of every single thing that happens in a scene, every word spoken and every action made, which is made all the more ludicrous by it nominally being a framing story told from person to person. He seems to have a stubborn reluctance to zoom out and describe anything at a larger scale. There's a scene in the first book where Kvothe haggles with a horse dealer to buy a horse and it could easily have been a sentence or two about how he bought a horse and rode to Treybin. I really wanted him to work on his pace and know when to leave the little details alone, but then I realised that if he did that there would be nothing left of the book. His writing is almost entirely comprised of minutiae. So it sounds like he's going totally the wrong way.

savinhill posted:

The way you describe it makes it sound like it should have been released as a text based pc game instead of as a novel.

Solice Kirsk posted:

Thats not fair. Remember, he skipped over a trial that launched Kvothe into modern myth, a pirate attack at sea, surviving a ship wreck, etc.

M_Gargantua posted:

Why did it have to be shipwreck and being homeless? Why couldn't it just have been a simple trip where he wound up being robbed? Lets throw in this terrible event that would have been an awful tragedy to most people but its just another footnote of Kvothe's life.

BananaNutkins posted: