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Liesmith posted:I can't point to specific pages, but when he's dalking about Denna/Diana/Dean whatever her name is to his buddy, and his buddy is all "she a bitch" his response is goony as gently caress. "Yes, she is cruel, like a cruel wind, a force of nature that cannot be controlled. And she's also a shy deer, you can't make any sudden movements or she will be startled and run away. That's why I'm hanging around while she bangs other dudes, creeping slowly closer until one day we will be lovers instead of friends." There is even a paragraph where he revels in the fact that he's superior to all her lovers because they don't truly understand her like he does, and they come and go while he's always there for her. This happens all the time in novels. Mr. Darcy is a complete creep by those standards but Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the best examples of a romance novel in literature. What's acceptable, romantic behavior for fictional characters is creepy in real life only because the real life people can't tell the difference between reality and fiction. I really liked the book. Like others, I don't think it would have been much in the third person, but the first person definitely added a lot.
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Nov 22, 2010 00:41
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Rothfuss's Kvothe-as-goony-Mary-Sue creepiness really didn't bother me and I sort of felt inclined to defend him until I read that blog post on circumcision posted on the last page. Holy crap, that's probably one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. GRRM might be goony and a lazy writer but at least his blog posts are all about football and partying.
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Dec 20, 2010 20:37
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treeboy posted:The fact that we can so easily describe Kvothe with a term such as 'Goony' demonstrates his characterization isn't too far from certain everyday realities. The problem is that Kvothe would be a shut-in in real life, not a tremendous badass whose name is whispered like a bogey man.
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Dec 21, 2010 18:40
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I'm only a quarter way through the book, but man the supporting cast is so utterly drab and dull. I just finished off the First Law and Best Served Cold, with The Crippled God in between, and Abercrombie's cast is so lackluster in comparison. The Harry Potter cast of supporting characters was more memorable.
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Mar 30, 2011 18:36
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Habibi posted:Did you mean Rothfuss' cast, not Abercrombie's? Oh, poo poo. Yeah, obviously Abercrombie's cast is by far the most interesting. Rothfuss' is just blah.
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Mar 30, 2011 19:24
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therapy posted:Personally I'd rather read the same story but from another character's point of view. "Kvothe thought he was a musician - walked around with a Lute and Lord knows how he could afford tuition. He was hugely egotistical and largely annoying, and thus had few friends." I basically picture everyone reacting to Kvothe like he's an autistic, red-headed 15 year old who talks and acts like he's 60. Basically, everyone just thinks he's super weird.
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Apr 9, 2011 08:28
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Streebs posted:Or he read A Midsummer Night's Dream in college. Also, notice that the dialog between Kvothe and Felurian is sometimes in rhymed couplets. her lines start with a lower case letter for no other perceptible reason than ~fey~ Rothfuss tells a pretty good story but man can it be grating if you think about it too hard
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Apr 12, 2011 19:06
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Metonymy posted:But he really doesn't! I don't know. The story is entertaining enough, if wordy and juvenile at times. I enjoy reading it, but I also don't like thinking too hard about it. It's like Harry Potter if it was written by a GBS goon.
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Apr 13, 2011 07:50
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God I can smell him through my computer screen
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Apr 18, 2011 19:50
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The Supreme Court posted:My girlfriend is pretty sure that Master Ash (Denna's patron) is Cinder, which would fit pretty nicely. Edit: didn't know that was a common theory! The 'prevailing' theory is that Master Ash is Bredon, who is also one of the (human) Amyr. And he is training Denna to become an Amyr; and what Kvothe assumes (in his rush to be her knight in shining armor, with the nudging of the Cthaeh) to be marks of her being beaten are actually from her training. Both Bredon and Ash use a walking stick, the times of their comings and goings in Severen seem to coincide, and it's possible Denna's rescuing of the prostitute may have been part of Amyr training. HeroOfTheRevolution fucked around with this message at 20:43 on May 8, 2011 |
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May 8, 2011 20:39
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Rothfuss went on some super creepy rant about how male circumcision is morally the worst thing in the world on his blog. I get the feeling he's a creep in real life, and it definitely shows in his writing. Joe Abercrombie and Steven Erikson are pretty well-adjusted and normal guys though, so it's not like it's the purview of fantasy authors to be weirdos.
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May 15, 2011 15:32
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anathenema posted:But it wasn't a sappy, happy ending by any means. Abercrombie understands at least how to hit tragedy, futility and "adult" themes without killing everyone off. Killing characters is pretty much the cheapest way to tug on emotion. Good writers can pull strings in their readers without killing characters, so when characters do actually die the response is much greater. Contrast Abercrombie to, say, JK Rowling, who attempted to garner emotion by killing off a minor character a chapter in the later Harry Potter books, to the point where it was ho-hum and expected.
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Jul 18, 2011 15:13
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I think he specifically meant in the Adem culture.
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May 17, 2012 21:58
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Above Our Own posted:That's something I feel is one of the book's larger flaws. Kvothe is supposed to be this brilliant wizard trickster hero yet frequently fails to put obvious clues together. This isn't particularly bothersome. We know we're reading a book so we're looking for clues, but Kvothe as yet doesn't really have any reason to assume that his mother was anything special.
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Jun 11, 2012 17:56
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Oh Snapple! posted:Alternate viewpoint: There's a middle ground. I mostly agree with the world-building aspect, but Erikson's characterization is pretty bad and his story is, at times, rambling and incoherent. A few of Erikson's characters are interesting, but most of his cast is bland. He gives a name to every single mook, and most of those names are terrible and the characters are uninteresting. Erikson falls into telling and not showing; why are certain characters like Whiskeyjack or Rake a big deal? Well, because Erikson says so. They never really do anything 'on-screen' to suggest that they should be considered interesting. Erikson would have benefited greatly from an editor who would have been willing to just say no to entire chunks of the books, many of which go nowhere. I still like Malazan, though. Its scope is unmatched in modern fantasy.
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Feb 24, 2013 17:41
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Danhenge posted:Whiskeyjack is a big deal because he used to be a Fist in the Malazan army and was a high up devotee of Hood before the 'coup' and shakeup in the Empire? That all becomes clear by the end of the series. None of that is on-screen, though. We're told this character is a big deal, we never see him do anything.
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Feb 24, 2013 19:20
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Danhenge posted:Ultimately if you have to have every detail explained to you then I suppose Malazan is not for you. I'd argue that, in fact, what makes Malazan better written than most fantasy is that it treats you like an adult as opposed to a child that has to be spoon fed every last detail. I've read all, what, 16 books in the universe published so far and have enjoyed most of them. That said, there's nothing particularly adult about Malazan as opposed to any other fantasy series, it's just less tightly edited than most others and it can definitely be confusing. Erikson's stupendously awful naming conventions don't help, either. But being shown and not told how important certain characters occurs even in Forge of Darkness: I expected to find out why Captain Emo Anomander Rake is so cool and important like we're told he is throughout Book of the Fallen, only to discover in the first few pages that people in his original time period consider him exactly as cool and important as later people do despite no particular reason that should be the case. It's like Erikson's writing about his favorite D&D character and just expects that everyone else understands why he's so cool... which is pretty much exactly what it is, so that's not surprising. Speaking of Rothfuss, though, is there any chance of the third book being completed?
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Feb 27, 2013 06:31
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