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Sick emoticon-burn, bro. Sick. In fairness though, yeah, a lot of this book is goony. The author comes across as a bit of a goon in interviews, the protagonist is a sperging white-knight goon, the bitter old version of the protagonist is a spent and useless... goon, running away from the world. And yet I really enjoyed the book, yeah it's a ludicrous wish-fulfillment mixture of Good Will Hunting and Harry Potter but hey, the prose is lovely when he's not over-writing it to death, the story clips along at a nice rate and it's a pretty decent YA fantasy novel. The Zap Brannigan thing also makes it very funny.
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Nov 16, 2010 19:04
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1100 pages? Well fair enough, I think I'll cut the guy some slack, he's actually been working with all the extra time, at least. quote:Insane mechagodzilla rambling quote:Does anybody else feel like Rothfuss drew a little TOO heavily from LeGuin's Earthsea? I'm just getting around to reading the latter, and good lord...
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Jan 18, 2011 20:24
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He's called them "a cornerstone of modern fantasy" and has read and loved them, so I don't think anyone would be out of line accusing him of lifting a concept or two from them. Source: http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2008/02/ursula-k-le-guin/ EDIT: Wait, what, you can't come up with a parallel? In a two stories about two guys headin' off to Wizard School to become Master Namers?
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Jan 20, 2011 20:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:So would I like this series if I find mary-sue type characters really annoying?
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Feb 21, 2011 15:31
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Anyone got any ideas on the origins of that? Anything I can read?
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Feb 22, 2011 20:13
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Just around page 330 now. Honestly maybe this will change when the (more) embarrassing sex/relationship stuff starts but I just cannot stop reading what he writes. I mean, I'm being given boring descriptions about how magic works and stuff about numbers and geometry when throwing a stone and I just have to keep reading the drat book. I was up to 3am yesterday and most of today I find my mind wandering off to think about what I've read and try to find excuses to wander past my Kindle and sit down "for five minutes". The "joke for musicians" was probably the most grating thing so far though. drat that was smug.
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Mar 13, 2011 20:41
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If this doesn't end one way or another at the end of book three, may as well just call him proto-grrm and start following his blog for football facts.
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Mar 14, 2011 19:21
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Just got to Denna and Kvothe's argument and holy poo poo I am so mad at how loving goony Rothfuss is. Stop writing about "Relationships" Jesus Christ.
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Mar 17, 2011 22:04
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Finished it. I should probably go back and read all the discussion but my thoughts: Almost the entire first third of the book is cyclical, there's a sub-plot, Kvothe slaps on the smug-face, overcomes, then goes back to where he was at the start of the sub-plot. Nothing really gets moving until he does, and even then there's a lot of fat a less frightened editor would have kicked out of the book without a second thought. While I didn't mind Felurian as much as other people in this thread, Losi and the end of chapter 107 is probably the gooniest, most offensive thing I had have read willingly that isn't in PYF Goonquotes. Also: The "evolved" views of the Adem and the whole BAKA GAIJIN *wears pokemon backpack*-ness of that section really grated on me. The Ctaeh is a really cool idea until you think about it logically. So there'll have to be a twist or two there for it not to seem dumb. Also now I know Devi and Auri weren't in the original script, it's really easy to spot the seams where he's stitched them into the story. Lastly, and most importantly, I don't think Pat knows how people interact irl, more than that, I don't think he understands people at all. Everyone is rightly saying that his views on sex and women are weird and creepy at best, but what of his views on friends? People in general? Go through this entire novel and find me a person who's character has more than two dimensions, most characters just get the one. Really think about it. Even Kvothe's best bros: Willem: I am a jew/german/russian with a beard and stoic nature. Simmon: I am a likable dandy who is bad with women Kvothe: Jaded-  And the way they interact is really... off. Everyone in the book apart from Sim/Will/Chronicler comes across either as vast dickheads or annoying and spineless. And even when Will/Kvothe/Sim talk they're usually bickering or getting RELLY ANGRY ABOUT THEIR PASTS at one another. It's bizarre. If one of my mates was telling me a story then suddenly started shouting about racial oppression I'd most likely find a new mate. Oh my God and when he broke that guy's arm for something he said and then the lady says "we make hard decisions" so sociopathic violence is sometimes for the best I guess! And chiming in with "The bursar can't do maths and that whole thing was so backwards it made me hurt" at the end. Can't wait for the third book!
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Mar 20, 2011 14:50
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I enjoyed him using his new-found prowess to break a guy's arm because he said a mean thing. Then the whole town lined up to say "You did the right thing by breaking that guy's arm. He a dick." I mean, that was real "I took out my katana and those bullies burst into tears" inner fantasy stuff.
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May 19, 2011 22:11
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He claimed to have written them all, but is "re-writing" them (cramming in Auri and Devi) as the series goes along. He gave a "it'll be 2 years time before the third is out" hand-wavey answer a while back, but don't start holding your breath. I have to re-state this, because every time I think about this book it bounces straight to the top of my head. Kvothe breaks a dude's arm because he says something mean and is instantly absolved by all the townsfolk. This is really where it pranced over the line from "harmless enough teenage-wish-fulfilment fantasy" into me watching for a goony bearded figure atop a water tower with a rifle. Yes the applause after he puts bullies in his place is embarrassing enough, and then there's all the clueless hands-down-shorts bullshit about women (he describes himself as a "skilled lover of women" on his own bio literally who would do that?) but that's par for the course in a masturbatory self-insert epic. It crosses a line when he starts immediately forgiving his character for being a sociopath who metes out pretty loving serious violence on a hair trigger because somebody says something off-colour. A broken arm is a big deal nowadays, let alone in Fantasy Land. Evfedu fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jul 16, 2011 |
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Jul 16, 2011 19:04
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frozenpeas posted:It's a good thing that authorial intent doesn't mean much when it comes to interpreting or enjoying a novel then,eh? quote:Read it as an proclamation of everything that is wrong with goonish manchild culture, hate the protagonist for what he represents, if you like. You can still get something from it.
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Jul 17, 2011 14:28
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The way you're spinning it is almost plausible but I don't think Rothfuss would be able to pull it off (and loves Kvothe too much to make him bad). The narrative and the framing device we've so far been shown do not allow for the kind of detail of understanding of the character to make a satisfying heel-turn/unreliable narrator twist plausible. Someone would have to burst into the tavern and go "But you are a liar!" or something. As you say, maybe the entirety of the third book is going to be an incredible, labyrinthine spiralling of niggling wrongness. It's not very likely though. Also: Kvothe killed/fought off a bunch of stoney spider-demons in book 1, and was then leathered by two punchy soldiers in book two. Did he lose shitloads of fighting prowess overnight?
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Jul 17, 2011 21:13
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No really lets have the argument about objective aesthetics again. I'm pretty sure we can solve it this time.
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Jul 29, 2011 18:26
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Above Our Own posted:I really like Rothfuss' writing style and I also appreciate his approach to magic in his series. Everything else is pretty bland and underdeveloped. I mean, as soon as they all started flapping their gobs about Bondsmagi I honestly thought I had mashed the "skip several chapters" button on my Kindle or something.
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Aug 8, 2011 22:14
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gently caress, I am a total prick I'm sorry. First one is defo worth a read anyway.
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Aug 8, 2011 22:46
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Yeah, after these two books I'm pretty bored of Kvothe's past but still very interested in the present. I hate to get snobby, but I don't think it's too radical a stretch to say that a decent author could have just started us off in the framing story, stayed there as Kote tried to become Kvothe again and gave us the backstory as and when the narrative demanded it. Frankly short of multiple ludicrous contrivances I can't see the story ending with anything even related to a satisfying conclusion. We're going to be left with "And Kote finished his story and sat in the three kinds of silence because heroes are actually usually real people that are flawed the end".
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Sep 8, 2011 19:27
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God I found that last night. Properly skin-crawling stuff.
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Mar 1, 2012 18:50
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Ornamented Death posted:On the flip side, how many fantasy and sci-fi authors don't have issues? 2. Ursula Le Guin? I think? 3. Joe Abercrombie (yet to be famous enough to say really offensive things in public though) I'm out.
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Mar 1, 2012 20:40
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isochronous posted:Honestly I think at this point you guys are just looking for things to bitch about. There seems to be some pretty heavy confirmation bias going on in your analyses of his blog post - I think if someone who you hadn't already categorized as a socially inept dirty perv had written that post you wouldn't give it a second thought. Granted the analogy does stretch on a bit, but since it's an *analogy*, what he's really talking about is how much he loved LOTR/The Hobbit, and using the girl to illustrate the myriad nuances of his love for the series. It's a good analogy, IMO. It made perfect sense to me and it got his point across pretty comprehensively. EDIT: @Poster above: Remember that bit where he broke a guys arm because he lost his temper then the doctor and village elder lined up to forgive him because some people just need to have grevious bodily harm inflicted upon them so that they can learn? Yeah.
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Mar 8, 2012 20:04
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Idiot sexist baby aside ("I'm a pragmatic fatalist at heart". Wow), I find it pretty difficult to divorce art from artist in this instance because the two are so inextricably linked. Kvothe is Rothfuss and both of them are unsettling, creepy people who make me cringe.
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Mar 9, 2012 20:15
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TShields posted:Hey, Rothfuss-loving goons. I just finished "Wise Man's Fears" and I have no loving clue what to read next. I've read GRRM, Joe Abercrombie, Brent Weeks, Robin Hobb.. What else has this same "feel" to it?
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Jun 10, 2012 16:28
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Evil Fluffy posted:Supposedly his plans are for Kingkiller to only be 3 books long (meaning we likely won't get any real ending or it'll be hamfisted as hell) and then the next books are supposed to be about other characters, including Bast, and tie together in a single bigass overarching story. The second he introduced the Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to use keyboard posting to transition back into the cut flower silence of a man wishing he could stop waiting for a third book.
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Jul 24, 2015 10:46
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