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I just finished First Law yesertday and I'd recommend it. My only real issue with it is as it's ending because Bayaz, who's clearly a massive shitlord, is just getting more and more dumb puppetmaster-style poo poo going on and on and he ends up such an over the top "true badguy" that all he was lacking was a mustache twirl as he walked away with Sulfur and the box. Apparently none of the other Magi (except one) ever seemed to really doubt him either. The story did keep my interest more than pretty much any part of either Kvothe book though. I hope the 3rd one gets moving because if I wanted to read about dumb magic school poo poo with the occasional interesting adventure I'd go read Harry Potter.
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Oct 24, 2014 02:09
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MrFlibble posted:It always happens when the author of a series takes too long to put out the next installment (although curiously I don't see much hate for Scott Lynch). But ten chapters about fairy loving rarely help matters. I could forgive his need to get out his pent up nerdfic if 2/3 of each book wasn't "Harry Potter, but everyone's a (bigger) rear end in a top hat" because I honestly could do without yet another chapter of him going to play at an inn and shooting the poo poo or seeing his crush who he's almost definitely going to kill and do nothing that progresses the story.
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Oct 29, 2014 17:38
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ZombieLenin posted:I even "liked" the secret 2nd book even though I too would critique his total lack of female agency. Once more, hid spergy neck beard fantasy of dominating and, in that domination, complete destruction of the will of what is in essence a mythological goddess of love, disgusted me. She's a Goddess of Love in the same way that Sirens were good singers whom men liked to listen to. She definitely isn't some Venus-type love goddess, she's a fey nymphomaniac who routinely hosed guys to death. The destruction of her will is likely due to Kvothe calling her true name during the struggle he had against her. Kvothe is even told later on to never tell anyone else his true name, not even the old lady who keeps the swords' histories. That whole section was dumb and seemed to badly reek of some nerd wish-fulfillment fantasy though. Of the Authors I've read over the last year he's probably the worst one. I'm interested to see how the story ends but it's not because he's a decent storyteller or worldbuilder, because he isn't. Reading the Stormlight Archives recently gave a pretty huge gap in writing talent. Even the worst parts of Kaladin's depression or the early chapters with Shallan were better than a fair bit of Kingkiller's fluff. Evil Fluffy fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 09:03
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Solice Kirsk posted:And the most interesting character of the series was scared to death that Kvothe spoke to it. I'm hoping that the entire next book is nothing but interesting story telling, but a large part of me knows it's gonna begin with Kvothe getting thrown out of school and then 800 pages of his money struggles/playing a lute. Bast's reaction was one of the best parts of the book. He goes from being a fairly composed individual to a hysterical panic. It would be interesting to know how Kvothe got to the tree in the first place if it's always under watch though. Given the gravity of Bast's description of things it's rather odd that Kvothe managed to just walk right up to it without issue. Or that he left without a trace or that any trace of his presence there had never been noticed by anyone who keeps watch over the area. Though it does seem pretty clear that Elodin's right about Kvothe having called Felurian's true name when they struggled initially (and bound her in some way as a result), since she not only treated him so royally but reacted to his return with compassion at his suffering and not by freaking the gently caress out and killing him or running to tell others what happened so he could be dealt with.
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Nov 19, 2014 07:05
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the JJ posted:Yeah, sex ninjas were a really loving low point that could have been okay but weren't. I'll defend the fairy goddess bit because of the context but yeah, gently caress the ninja part. All that rage, clearly you need to give it to a female who uses it to make a child and men aren't involved beyond that what sperm no don't be silly, lol man mommy.  Words can't properly describe how stupid that entire part was.
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Jan 4, 2015 05:57
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pentyne posted:It's been years, but I could've sworn there was some "I could tell they wanted me to stay with them, but I had other business to take care of" or something that came off as really creepy. Either way it was immediately followed up with a blatant stdh.txt when the Duke's wife starts ranting about how evil the Ruh are, Kvothe calls her out, and then says "Because I am Edema Ruh, what now!" I don't recall that being in the book but even if it is. He just saved them from rapist kidnappers and I'd take it more as him making the girls feel safe than anything else if it's in there.
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Jan 9, 2015 19:11
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If the delay means we get something similar to WMF then there won't be much point in following him or buying his books anymore. Spending the better part of a decade to write something that average is pretty hosed up. I can definitely believe this story is something he originally wrote in college though.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:18
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Yes but are the books better? I just started Assassin's Apprentice and while I can see how GURM would copy some of the writing style it's a better book than NOTW so far.
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Feb 11, 2015 20:25
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Ornamented Death posted:It's really no contest. Yeah I'm getting through the first book and it's very clear that this is far better than Rothfuss. Like I'm only past the part where Fitz is taught the Skill by Galen, but 'fails' and just had Verity lift the cloud that had him think he was terrible and had no knack for the Skill and while Fitz is mopey at times it's not even close to Kvothe or even Kaladin levels of  though I know I would be if I had his luck with pets. 
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Feb 13, 2015 07:17
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Karnegal posted:If you write your book while keeping an excel doc of the protagonist's funds at any given time, you probably need to to play a little less D&D. Rothfuss was the kind of DM who kept trac of players' rations and spell components just so he could let them know when they suddenly died of starvation/dehydration, or that they can't cast that fireball spell at those trolls because he's half a pinch of sulfur short.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:21
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It sounds like he wrote average fantasy but managed to get lucky and it got popular. I've picked up random books on iTunes for a dollar (or free) that've been about as well written as Kingkiller stuff and those books didn't include several hundred pages about going to school or recycling the same "met with girl/played music at a club/got in a pissing match with a shitlord noble" stuff over and over.
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Mar 6, 2015 07:53
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He is weirder than GRRM despite being decades younger. 
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Jun 6, 2015 00:12
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"Angry kid in High School" so Rothfuss is basically writing his teenage escapist fantasy and hoping to make millions off of it like Stephanie Meyer did with Twilight?
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Jun 7, 2015 22:52
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Benson Cunningham posted:Wittgen, your stance is that people shouldn't have strong emotions. That's um.... nice? And then Slow Regard came out and people realized that Book 2 wasn't a fluke, book 1 was. I went from NOTW and WMF to the two Stormlight Archives books so the terrible writing of WMF was made even more glaring in hindsight. Give me Kaladin or Shallan at their worst over Kvothe Potter and his Sex Ninja Adventures.
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Jun 11, 2015 18:12
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Benson Cunningham posted:Seeker was everything that everyone who read those books ever dreamed it would be. It was possibly the greatest show on TV while it was on. Watching Legend of the Seeker made me consider reading the books but pretty much everyone in the Fiction thread talked me down from that ledge so I've decided to just leave the TV show as my only experience. It didn't dawn on me until an episode or two in that the sword was based on the seeker of Truth books I'd heard about years before. esn2500 posted:Hey guys, should i give the sequel to The Name of the Wind , The Wise Man's Fear, a chance? I found it to be overly long and boring without any real payoff and it just never stuck with me the way other readers seem to feel about it. It's arguably worse than the first book so it's best to just write off Rothfuss and forget he ever existed.
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Jul 14, 2015 19:45
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The Supreme Court posted:
This would be fine and actually add to the book if it was used in a sane fashion, like when Kothe just glazes over the trial and is like "yeah poo poo happened whatever" that was fine and helped show that he doesn't actually consider it important even though others might want to know every detail about it since it was hyped up far more than it should've been. Ignoring tons of other things to focus on repeating more Harry Poverty and the Chamber of Stupid just makes him come across as a mediocre writer who has gotten a really lucky break and Stone Door or w/e the third book is called had been be more like the ending of WMF and less faerie and ninja sexcapades self-insert fantasy.
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Jul 14, 2015 22:00
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Solice Kirsk posted:For one, Pratchett wrote basically nonstop until that disease took him away from it. Rothfuss is struggling to put out a third book. Like others have said, I'm really hoping the third book is better than the first two, but I'll be just as happy if it is a total garbage heap and he just abandons Kvothe and just writes a bunch of new novels about different characters in the same world. I find it pretty interesting and his writing style might be better if he focuses on interesting things like the tree whose name I forget and the fight in the woods against the Chandrian and bandits. 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. This requires him to actually write the books though and considering Slow Regard was him screaming "I'm a
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Jul 16, 2015 00:14
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Solice Kirsk posted:I took the doll from The Slithery D in one smooth motion using Leaf Turning in Air. Grabbing it firmly I gestured to the spot where Kvothe had touched me. It was a gesture in two parts. Yes but how much money did he have and how much more did he have to raise and by when?
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Jul 17, 2015 20:51
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Velius posted:The more interesting question to me is why a bunch of people who hate the books, who keep parroting how stupifyingly obvious it is that they are awful, somehow find it rewarding to post repeatedly in the thread dedicated to these books about said loathing. It's pretty much every other post in the thread at this point. Don't you have better things to talk about, for example in other threads dedicated to things you enjoy? It's just weird. Go look at the ASOIAF thread(s). the series seemed like it had promise, then turned in to Harry Potter and the Crushing Student Debt, then it wandered off to sex ninjas and such while glossing over actual interesting things while the author mentions it's totally intentional to spend hundreds of pages talking about how poor Kvothe is and struggling to make ends meet to go to school and... what? Pirate attack at sea? Eh we'll just mention that offhand like it's no big deal so we can get back to the important stuff; talking about needing a sponsor and pining over a girl because Kvothe is somehow a well-traveled person with the people skills of a goony shut-in.
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Jul 20, 2015 05:01
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Karnegal posted:Here's one of the more detailed and sometimes amusing reviews of WMF that works to highlight its rampant shortcomings http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-751. This is a less vitriolic explanation of why this is not a good book. That review (especially the poverty and sexcapades stuff) is so spot on it's unreal.
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Jul 20, 2015 07:29
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ulmont posted:Ah, but remember, while the Adem laugh off the idea that men have any part in making children, they are aware of STDs (xref the quoted "Are you free from disease?"). In all the dumb parts of the sex ninja section of the book, the Adem not knowing basic biology seemed like an attempt to remind people "yeah this (matriarchal) culture's actually a bunch of morons who just happen to be really good at killing." Really between that and Felurian stuff it's not hard to believe Rothfuss originally wrote this story in college because it seemed like the kind of fantasy poo poo a lonely guy would write in his dorm room.
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Jul 23, 2015 08:11
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mallamp posted:The main problem is that Rothfuss really shot himself in the foot with that "three days" thing, the second book would be pretty good in longer series but in a trilogy it's way too slow The series being longer would not make the Felurian and Adem parts any better and would likely just mean the next several books would be worse. If/when the third book comes out if it isn't Storm of Swords-grade or better I hope his writing career comes to a screeching halt because WMF, if it had been his first book, would've been the last as well.
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Jul 27, 2015 19:21
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mallamp posted:Wheel of Time kept going on just fine despite dumb poo poo every now and then. And after worst book Jordan wrote one of the best. If it was, say 7 days, you could easily have three books of Harry Potter college edition and some faerie sex here and there, but when you're going for trilogy with a premise of unreliable narrator becoming a legend, that's just not going to work. I bet Rothfuss regrets limiting himself to three days. He could split third day in two books, I guess, but that's not enough at this point. Or he could simply have the story to Chronicler end and kick him out, go up to his room, and then when Bast comes in he decides he really needs to talk about 'everything else' and when Bast leaves to go get the guy he stops him and says he'd rather only Bast hear it. I mean there's definitely going to be decent ways to go about it, even having the third day end and Kothe is so wound up that he ends up deciding to keep going or something. If Rothfuss ever stops trying to out delay GRRM at releasing his next book we may find out. The problem is that after WMF I'm really not sure Rothfuss could pull it off unless WMF was just a massive brainfart (assuming he even considers anything to be seriously wrong in WMF). The book was worse than random stuff I've grabbed for a dollar (or free) off the iBooks and Kindle stores, like the cycle of Arawn books. Plus even if he got glowing reviews for WMF, he is not GRRM and can't just yank around Tor or whomever his publisher is like GRRM can and get away with it. It really doesn't help that I went from Kingkiller to Stormlight Archives though since those books were better in pretty much any way (and both start slow). Even the early Shallan chapters were better than most of WMF's chapters though I'm skipping pretty much all of her book 1 stuff on any rereads. Benson Cunningham posted:It's worth reading book one just because book two had a scene that is basically straight out of wrestlemania. The only thing missing is a commentator pair. I'm blanking on the scene you're referring to. Do you mean the arena fight where Kaladin jumps in to help Adolin or something else? I haven't read it since it came out but the only other that comes to mind is maybe a fight with the enemy's shardplate/bearer commander which I think turned in to a bit of a brawl?
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Jul 28, 2015 07:43
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Solice Kirsk posted:I doubt we'll get a conclusion to Kvothe's story even when the third book comes out. Considering how Rothfuss has made mention that after book 3 he's apparently going to do books focused on Bast, then others, yeah we won't. We'll probably get more Harry Potter fanfic with the book ended after he gets kicked out of school and sums up everything between then and the present in a couple sentences like "...and so after I got kicked out by the vulture-looking professor who always had it out for me I did [dumb thing] and [other dumb thing] then I killed [rear end in a top hat noble whose name I forget] and that started the current war."
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Sep 22, 2015 07:02
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Ar you suggesting Rothfuss might be a bad writer? 
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Sep 24, 2015 18:01
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Which is good, because if he ever puts the book out it's going to confirm that NotW was a fluke at best and he really is a lovely writer who just got extremely lucky, not that he's the first or last who will do so (see: Stephanine Meyer and Twilight or the Twilight fanfic writer who renamed stuff so he could publish 50 shades).
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Oct 2, 2015 05:28
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pentyne posted:Is Sanderson the one with the anecdotes about forcing himself to write a certain amount each morning, then editing it in the afternoon? Like his goal is to write at least 10 pages no matter how stuck his is, then go back over it and see if there was anything really good he wrote and then work on that aspect. GRRM and Rothfuss do tons of poo poo that involves not writing, Sanderson gets bored on a plane flight and writes a novella that ends up becoming a trilogy. I have a huge fear that he's going to burn out in a few years and we'll be stuck on book 3 or 4 of Stormlight and never see the end of it though. Boing posted:I'm about a fifth of the way through Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb and I'm really enjoying that on a level that The Name of the Wind didn't really hit. Hobb's prose is really good and I have a lot more respect for her as an author than I do for Rothfuss. Is the Farseer Trilogy worth sticking with? It's good. The Liveship Traders is also good if you can make it through the painfully slow start where everyone seems to be competing to see who's the biggest idiot/rear end in a top hat on the planet. Though the biggest rear end in a top hat is clearly Kyle, who has absolutely no redeeming qualities at any time and is probably the biggest piece of poo poo in any of Hobbs' books, though a guy in the Rain Wild Traders books comes close. I'd say go through the first trilogy and if you like it, try the Liveship one as it's not directly related but if you move on to the Tawny Man Trilogy it'll have Liveship references that won't make as much sense, while spoiling some of the Liveship stuff if you'd read it later.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:22
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Solice Kirsk posted:Its like he googled "How to look like a fantasy writer" and just ran with it. Isn't he in his early 40's? He used a Monkey's Paw to wish he could be like GRRM. He got both the fame and the looks, apparently.
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Oct 8, 2015 06:00
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theghostpt posted:I finished that book just recently and I kinda felt the same, the obsession to Denna is getting way too much, looks like Patrick is definitely setting everything up for Kvothe to murder her for his own "justice" reasons or something like that. There's definitely something odd how Denna seems able to constantly find Kvothe everywhere (or the opposite). Considering early in the first book Chronicler says something like "this is a man who's seen and killed an angel" I'd be really stunned if he doesn't kill Denna, or do something stupid that gets her killed. Like pick a fight with a certain rear end in a top hat noble who happens to be only a few deaths away from the throne. Khizan posted:If what you want is dialogue, characterization, or storytelling, on the other hand, you should avoid him. Shadows of Self has more storytelling than both Kingkiller books combined. 
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Oct 22, 2015 06:48
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I'm going to have to try the book as well because that's pretty drat funny.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:58
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Every time I see Rothfuss it just reminds me that while some (very dumb) people apparently consider him the next GURM, he manages to look significantly creepier. GRRM looks like your standard old weird guy. Rothfuss looks like he helps harvest people's kidneys for beer money. He also looks like a token 40-year-old Goon
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Nov 25, 2015 01:00
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Of course we shouldn't forget that he released A Slow Regard For A Secondary Character. Clearly he's been writing but when you start writing books about secondary characters people have good reason to wonder about your priorities. At least GRRM has trickled out some teaser chapters from TWOW so people have reason to believe he's doing something. Though HBO's made clear what happens with ADWD's biggest cliffhanger.Trammel posted:Personally, I expect him to announce that his editors have "forced" him to break his third book in to two, and then when the story is still not complete, announce that a fifth is "necessary" to really finish the story. etc. etc. etc. Pretty sure Kingkiller's supposed to be a trilogy in a larger setting too, like after Kingkiller there was going to be a trilogy focused on Bast and then more after that.
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Nov 26, 2015 02:35
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If he can avoid spending half of the book rehashing "LOOK HOW loving POOR KVOTHE IS OH WOE IS HE AND HIS FINANCIAL SITUATION" he might be able to do it. But this is Rothfuss we're talking about, so we can probably count on the first chapter or two his benefactor's wife has his funding pulled and we get another dozen chapters of him playing for room and board while working at the lab and so forth.
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Nov 26, 2015 06:59
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Aquarium Gravel posted:Rothfuss held another AMA on Reddit, and instead of having a prepared statement like his oh so clever conversation with himself last time, he told people to Google it when they asked about the third book, and then complained that the AMA felt dead. Something Rothfuss wrote was a depressing let down you say?
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Nov 26, 2015 17:12
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picklefish posted:him freaking out about the fallout 4 distress signal where the mom and kid were already dead for 100 years and shutting off stream was so good. give me more. Was he freaking out because it was better writing than anything he's ever published?
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Nov 28, 2015 23:43
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Saw 50 posts and foolishly thought something worthwhile happened, but no it's just jivjov blindly defending Rothfuss and failing to understand how people could be frustrated with a goony procrastinating writer who is milking his fans because he's probably afraid that his next book will be as bad as WMF.Strom Cuzewon posted:Are there many writers that can keep up that pace? Stephen King and Sanderson maybe. If Rothfuss was a human printing press like Sanderson we'd be waiting on the last book of the next (Bast's?) trilogy instead of Doors of Stone right now, or we'd still be waiting but we'd have gotten a trilogy about the Amir or something in the meanwhile.
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Dec 14, 2015 20:28
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Xaris posted:Robin Hobb's Assassins Apprentice is really quite good (with some personal gripes from me here and there) and sets out almost like what Kingkiller tries to do but in a more complete and better way. Never got around to reading the subsequent trilogies from her though. Liveship Traders is good after the first 50-100 pages (which were nearly unbearable to me), Tawny Man is alright, and Rain Wilds is decent but has a slow start like the Liveship books.
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Dec 21, 2015 17:28
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And yet his posts were still better writing than Slow Regard.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:50
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Benson Cunningham posted:Honestly I think the first book is decent, especially given how poo poo a lot of what gets published in fantasy is (I'm looking at you today Michael Sullivan). But, then the second book came out. After reading it, rather than assuming the good parts of the first book are the norm and the bad parts the exception, the expectation flipped. I was fine with the first book until he got to school, at which point any promise it had went right out the window and in to a wood chipper and got worse than the random fantasy books/series that are available for free at random times on iBooks.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:50
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Ornamented Death posted:The thing about Rothfuss is that he's a much better business man than he is a writer. Just look at what he's been able to leverage from a single fairly successful book. I suppose we should be thankful on some level that he's dedicated a lot of that acumen into charitable causes. Also lets not forget that back in October there was news that Lionsgate got the rights to the Kingkiller books so any writing Rothfuss does is going to be for whatever movie/series Lionsgate is making. He's the next GRRM after all, and that means ignoring your books while film/tv series catches up and then surpasses it in the story, while making you a shitload more money than a book will. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/lionsgate-wins-rights-fantasy-book-828557 If whatever they make does even moderately well he'll likely never write the next book because he'll probably shift all focus to film/tv/whatever instead since he'd likely make more money while having to do equal (or less) work if he's just overseeing the story that Lionsgate is writing up, like GRRM supposedly does for GoT. anilEhilated posted:I really don't get this kind of fan entitlement. Rothfuss is a hack, but for reasons that have nothing to do with him writing or not. He doesn't owe his readers anything. It's not fan entitlement to call a writer out on their bullshit. It happens in every other field and writers and artists are not special snowflakes who get to be exempt from criticism. Rothfuss is a guy who got lucky with a decent book, then followed it up with utter garbage but managed to be popular enough that he might rebound and will likely be set for life as long as Lionsgate puts out something. SpacePig posted:I also just learned that he's been optioned for a TV show, a movie, and a video game, and negotiating all of that probably took up a decent enough deal of his time. This should probably light a fire under him to get the last book finished. Much like how the GoT series (and video games) lit a fire under GRRM's rear end and he wrote Winds of Winter much more quickly than ADWD?
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Jan 19, 2016 18:39
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