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The worldbuilding is p cool, for the little bits of it that get handed out. But coupled with little characterization (unless you really count the meta-fiction that may or may not play out), it's as most of you say--weak, thematically, even if the prose flows well. Then again, most novels should be combining plot and character, and with fantasy people mostly want window-dressing and firebally set-pieces, which is unfortunate, but I can see how this one is trying to bridge the gap between both areas.
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Nov 21, 2010 20:41
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And now that I've thought more on it (and this is endemic of SFF in the past decade or so, thanks Jordan!), book series nowadays break the cardinal storytelling rule of 'start your story as close to the end as reasonably possible'. Which makes Rothfuss (and others) extremely guilty of padding. "You want to know my rad story. Okay. But first, the entire history of my main guy, heh." I mean, it's great if you have nothing else to read, but there's literally millions of books out there; it'd be great if authors condensed their thousands of pages of epics down to one novel and then go onto something else, thanks.
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Dec 1, 2010 05:41
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So I'm at about page 400 and all I can think of is 'how is there another ~300 pages of this'. As I get older, I'm getting way more critical of book length. Gene Wolfe writes amazing stories that max out at 800 pages, maybe. Guy Gavriel Kay is similar. And I would call their stuff suitably epic. Breaking out of genre-bound stuff, there's other authors who do similarly 'epic' works that cover different worlds and/or cultures, rules, spans of times, that are contained to less-than-doorstopper novels. With the exception of someone like say Martin, padding is padding, and SFF needs to learn that page count does not equal quality or development (and even Martin needs editing down, as the bad thread has agreed). Erikson is a bad example because his books could easily be half the length they are. That and the 'rule' I mentioned applies more to the narrative than the literal timeline. Actually, saying that book length features into the reading enjoyment one gets is kind of misguided, really. Here's yet another movie analogy, but it's not like Tarantino thought 'oh wait, my story needs to be a sweeping seven hour trilogy of a crime epic and we need to see Vincent Vega grow up as a young hoodlum, see him travel to Amsterdam and his adventures there, watch as he bites into a Royale With Cheese, so we properly know his character so that the film will be that much better!' Oftentimes less is more, but going by Rothfuss' blog, the next book is even longer...
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Dec 6, 2010 00:58
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mabbott74 posted:Some people just seem that they go into books with the thought "ok, how can I bash this popular book to make myself seem like some iGenius." Or there's always the possibility that we've taken literature/writing courses and can perform readings and analyses? 
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Dec 16, 2010 08:43
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Velius posted:You have a history of making extremely smug observations about how poor the writing is in science fiction, typically with airs about how you, unlike everyone else, can actually appreciate what good writing is. loving sweet, after all this time someone finally noticed.  I happen to like a lot of SF and fantasy (have you looked in the Mieville thread?), even the more questionable stories . What I cannot abide, tho, is loving lovely prose that apparently got past a team of agents, editors, and marketing staff, because it sells to folk like goons who don't care that they're reading something a 15-year old could write and tell people 'they just like to shut their mind off, man...' And I bring it up here because goons will gush expressly about how good the writing is in threads about novels with exactly those (and other) problems. I mean, I've never seen anyone from here wander into CC and participate in straight critique either, so I don't know why it's a surprise. Liesmith posted:Man, I don't even remember that dude or that thread. He apparently owns, though. And I don't think criticism or specific readings should be an elitist sort of thing either, just something people should do to really find out why they like something, what that thing is trying to say, whether they should paying money for it, and ultimately, to read things in a more challenging way than when they were younger. It seems like more of a societal thing anyway, that once you graduate you shouldn't want to read anything by putting any effort into it and should only read for fun because life's hard enough--which is counter-productive to the max.
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Dec 18, 2010 00:11
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I realize most of the problems of the story (not the author or overarching plot or even gooniness) is having half of it fall directly into a angsty teen/uni days drama-rama. I mean, who honestly says to themselves 'heck yes 300 pages of school days in something that isn't a YA novel, there'll be mean teachers and a pesky boyfriend to overcome and having to worry about tuition, that'll be interesting as gently caress. No, no it isn't. We don't need all this poo poo to understand why Kvothe is the way he is. You already did that in the first half of the book. I don't need an entire chapter explaining to me that you're starting to tell me about your ~first girlfriend~ but you can't yet but you will but you have to wait a little more or some poo poo and then when she shows up, surprise it's e/n 101. I can see where he plotted this portion of the series out while still in college. Hell, these exact scenarios happened in part to people I knew, which might explain the popularity, but doesn't really feel moving in a revenge tale, I dunno. But: quote:I really like the way Rothfuss writes - not so much the characters and plots but just the way he assembles words one after another is a joy to read. This is true, and I'll probably read the next one due to it.
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Dec 23, 2010 20:33
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I for one am excited about seeing a Final Fantasy Kvothe.
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Feb 25, 2011 19:55
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"..."
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Feb 25, 2011 19:55
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