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Name of the Wind was a very mixed bag for me, some parts were excellent fantasy and others dragged to no end. Overall for a debut novel I think it shows enormous potential. The Good: this book can be very funny/cynical when it tries to be, and I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions. The university, its structure, and the masters who oversee it were all well defined and enjoyable. I really liked the way the author gave logical "rules" to magic. The way sympathy was described as a sort of thermodynamics based efficiency of energy transfer was very intelligent, and went beyond the usual "say a magic word", or "a wizard did it" that most fantasy seems to fall back on. Finally I liked Kvothe's non-spoony bard background. The Bad: The extended section where Kvothe lived on the streets were very poorly handled. He goes from a child prodigy, to social outcast for a couple years, then almost overnight returns to super genius state with almost zero long term consequences beyond his poverty. His super apptitude for everything wears thin after a while, for example why couldn't there be a couple studies Kvothe just isn't all that great at, or certain musical forms he actually has to work at to master? Finally the poverty thing gets old after a while. Since Kvothe is a such a master prodigy at everything he puts his mind to shouldn't he be able to dream up some get rich quick scheme? The Ugly: Romance. Denna seems such an incredibly bland character, and Kvothe so socially akward these scenes drag horribly for me. Every one of their interactions seems scripted: Denna appears suddenly, they banter, Kvothe misses several blatant oportunities to do anything romantic with her, Denna vanishes/hooks up with a new temporary man, Kvothe longs creepily about how perfect she is. Have them do something!! Have Denna do something that makes us understand why Kvothe is so crazy about her! Make Kvothe act more like the 16 year old male that he is (hint: he should be thinking about sex non-stop).
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Dec 2, 2010 20:40
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Thought I'd check out Rothfuss' blog to see if he had any info on the upcoming novel and of course the top post was a detailed 3 page argument on the evils of circumcision. He truly is an alpha internet nerd.
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Dec 3, 2010 23:00
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I thought I had gone crazy for a minute there, but for some reason last night the blog button on his homepage linked to this entry: http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2010/04/concerning-circumcision/ Actually yeah, when you click the blog next to a picture of his face on the homepage it directs to that article for a second then redirects to the newest one, bizarre.
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Dec 3, 2010 23:59
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"I have known her longer, my smile said. True, you have been inside the circle of her arms, tasted her mouth, felt the warmth of her, and that is something I have never had. But there is a part of her that is only for me. You cannot touch it, no matter how hard you might try. And after she has left you I will still be here, making her laugh. My light shining in her. I will still be here long after she has forgotten your name." This might be the single creepiest thing I have ever read. All the stuff involving Denna was kind of akward for me, but this passage here just takes the cake.
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Dec 14, 2010 20:57
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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." Have you ever considered that some readers/fans will enjoy some aspects of a work of art, while disliking other aspects? And then they will point out some of these defects, both to find if they bothered other viewers, and suggest future modifications by which a work could improve itself? Nah, they're just trolling to boost their e-cred, secretly they believe this book is the divine word of god and culmination of western civilization.
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Dec 16, 2010 18:10
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I think it would be pretty cool if Kvothe was both a demi-nerd shut-in and a tremendous bad rear end. Someone with world shattering powers and the inability to carry out a normal human conversation would be pretty entertaining.
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Dec 26, 2010 00:09
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Bizob posted:Also re: Denna I wouldn't be super suprised if it turns out she was Speculation Spoiler one of the Chandrian or at least an agent of the Chandrian. One of the Chandrian is named Cinder, Kvothe named Denna's patron Ash (Kvothe picks meaningful names without conscious thought, like that horse).
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Feb 23, 2011 04:39
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Pretty good so far, but I still find every section involving Denna tedious at best.
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Mar 2, 2011 06:08
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Initially I was a trifle put off by the fact the author subjects us to our hero loving and winning the love of an immortal fairie that exists to destroy the minds of man but then a wonderful thing happened. I remembered our hero was Zapp Brannigan telling of his amazing conquests, and then all was well. Unfortunately this technique doesn't work with every scene with Denna, which I maintain is the most loathsome "love" story I have witnessed since Attack of the Clones.
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Mar 4, 2011 05:13
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Speculation that I'm just about 100% sure on: Meluan Lackless is Kvothe's aunt. Meluan hates the Ruh because one of them stole her sister, Kvothe's mother was seduced by his father away from the nobility. Kvothe keeps having weird recognition that he can't place when he meets her. Hell, Kvothe's mom gets mad at him in Name of the Wind for singing a tawdry song about Lady Lackless.
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Mar 4, 2011 05:44
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Why make one door stopper fantasy trilogy when you can make two? I'm predicting the next book ends at the present with Kvothe hatting up to go save the world.
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Mar 4, 2011 20:34
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As a rule I find fantasy tends to work best if you just minimize the sex scenes. All too often these scenes either offer a horrifying glimpse into the bizarre fetishes of the author (gently caress you Terry Goodkind), or are so embarrassingly written I find my eyes skipping entire pages. Sure there are exceptions, Joe Abercrombie in particular seems to write his sex scenes to be hilariously realistic/awkward, but overall I find a nice fade to black ultimately saves us all from a lot of embarrassment. Wise Man's Fear seems to aim to be an unholy defining work of fantasy loving. For the first half or so of our story young Kvothe continues his previous pattern of encounters with the opposite sex: they all instantly fall in love with his perfectness but because he's immature at relationships he somehow misses the signs that 90% of the females he meets want to ride his magic staff. I guess we're supposed to assume our 16 year old hero is either brain dead or has a sex drive less than my neutered cat. Then halfway through the book our story takes an dizzying abrupt turn to become non-stop mind-shattering fantasy sex action. Kvothe learns to gently caress from a magical faerie (insert dozens of stupifying sexual techniques. KVOTHE performs HUNDRED PALM CARESS...IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!) and apparently sexes so well that she transforms from a devourer of men into a friendly companion who gives him hugs and wipes tears from his eyes, when they aren't spending days loving of course. From here for rather poorly elaborated reasons we take a prolonged detour to visit what I assume is Rothfuss' dream fetish kung fu civilization. We learn that you can end STIs by never loving outside of your STI free community, I think I remember having this same idea in sex-ed back in junior high but quickly dismissed it as absolutely unfeasible and retarded. Also this civilization cannot correlate sex to reproduction...because apparently nobody has remained monogamous or abstinent long enough to notice a difference in birthing patterns. What about the really fat unhygienic people Rothfuss? Oh yeah and everyone is an exhibitionist too, sure why not. Ultimately in the end our hero has reached a healthy opinion on human relationships: women are like lutes waiting to be played, or something equally bizarre, I really don't want to look it up again.
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Mar 5, 2011 06:02
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Despite my distaste for all the weird sex scenes and Denna's continued pointless existence, overall it was a well written book. It could be a fantastic book if it just focused more on the Chandrian, Amyr, university, or magic battles.
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Mar 6, 2011 04:41
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Huh, the Felurian scene made me think of Calypso in The Odyssey. But I guess if I dug deep enough I'm sure I'd find literature littered with "and then I hosed a faerie/elf/nymph for like years!" type situations.
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Mar 9, 2011 02:04
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Why in God's name would they cut out Elodin scenes of all things? That's some of the best stuff he writes!
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Mar 13, 2011 20:20
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Getting arrested for repeatedly describing to children his iron hard "Alar".
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Mar 24, 2011 22:46
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WeWereSchizo posted:The Amyr will probably turn out to be boilerplate "do whatever it takes to stop the evil forces, but eventually become as bad as the evil they tried to stop." We were already told that one of their notable members was basically a more scientifically efficacious analogue of Dr Mengele, so I'd rate this possibility as pretty high.
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Mar 26, 2011 01:21
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The villian in Ender's Shadow was pretty lovely. Curse you comically evil super genius child who grew up on the the same street that I did!
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Apr 8, 2011 23:15
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Habibi posted:It's going to turn out that he has to sex the Chandrian to death, and that all of his adventures learning sympathy / naming / how to be a ninja are going to be incidental to him literally raping the Chandrian with whispering hands. If the series had this ending I would withdraw all my criticisms of it. One Chandrian's weakness is fire, one is iron, and one is RAPE.
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Apr 13, 2011 22:44
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It just seemed like a standard adolescent male wish fulfillment scenario: massacre the bad guys, rescue the maidens fair, hell he even managed to cure a case of PTSD catatonia within a couple hours! Personally I thought the passage would have proven much more powerful if it turned out that the band actually were Edema Ruh. As it was the event wrapped up too nicely, with Kvothe basically being able to say MY PEOPLE would never do something like this, they must be brigands in disguise, which of course they were. Him having to confront the fact that any humans can turn into monsters, even his own people, and then having to apply his adolescent retribution to them would have been much more powerful in my opinion.
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May 19, 2011 22:30
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Former Everything posted:I realize that I might be giving Rothfuss too much credit, but this seems like a great opportunity to really expand on the recent dark fantasy trend and take it a step further, exploring the impossible hero/unreliable narrator relationship and forcing readers to stop accepting protagonists at face value. No, you have to actually work to set something like this up. You can't just suddenly proclaim: Oh Kvothe was lying, aren't we oh so clever! If an author wants to go the unreliable narrator route they really need to subtlety imply that something is wrong throughout the entire narrative, giving the reader clear doubts that something is up without quite giving the whole secret away. So I ask you, have we seen any implied evidence that Kvothe is lying to us, beyond that it would make certain parts of the story less of an embarrassing nerd wet dream? Because it seems like there were plenty of opportunities for the Chronicler to say or even think something along the lines of "you know I was at the University, and interviewed A LOT of other people who intimately knew you, and I've gotta say some of this doesn't sound 100% factual."
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Jul 17, 2011 18:57
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Wait, someone praised the Felurian chapters? You got me Pat, my juvenile perception of sex being icky is why I found something uncomfortable about Kvothe casting Level 4 erotic massage before regenerating his mana to channel lotus petals of orgasmic thrust.
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Aug 7, 2011 00:29
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Liesmith posted:The third book will reveal that he's been sneaking in all the creepy poo poo in order to convince everyone around him that he's not really a hero, but it just doesn't work he's too cool for them to believe it I like this theory. Remember that wierd time skip when he went sailing? Kvothe actually spent that time loving faerie elf maidens, killing dozens of pirates with a katana, and saying things that made the entire bar stand up and clap.
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Aug 11, 2011 23:12
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I'm more impressed that Kvothe has discovered the secret to male oral contraception, something we're still not close to in modern science. Magic plants! The whole Adem section felt like something dreamed up during discussion period of Human Sexuality 101. I can almost picture Rothfuss, that classmate with the weird beard who always seems to wear shorts and sandals to class, furiously scribbling down notes on a sexual Utopia at the back of a UW-Stevens Point lecture hall.
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Aug 18, 2011 05:54
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Me from page 6:keiran_helcyan posted:Speculation that I'm just about 100% sure on: Meluan Lackless is Kvothe's aunt. Meluan hates the Ruh because one of them stole her sister, Kvothe's mother was seduced by his father away from the nobility. Kvothe keeps having weird recognition that he can't place when he meets her. Hell, Kvothe's mom gets mad at him in Name of the Wind for singing a tawdry song about Lady Lackless. I also wouldn't be shocked if Kvothe has some faerie blood in him, people keep emphasizing his eyes which change with emotion, which sounds like a faerie thing. My other baseless silly speculation: 1) Amyr are at least part Faerie (Felurian says the true ones were never human, also it helps explain how they vanished so quickly in the past.) 2) Tak is a faerie game (Felurian knew it instantly, it emphasizes beauty over logic) 3) Bredon is an Amyr/faerie (see the last two) 4) Bredon is Denna's secret patron (location, interest in Kvothe, The Oracle mentions Denna's patron beats her with a cane and Bredon is the only person we've met with a cane. It would also explain why Denna keeps "coming back", maybe she feels like by aiding the Amyr she's doing something useful with her otherwise pointless existence.) 5) Kvothe will kill Bredon to rescue Denna (since he's an Amyr this fulfills his bit about killing an angel in his intro). 6) the door at the bottom of The Archives binds Jax/Iax (the character who in the past captured/named the moon, it mentioned that he was enslaved "under Earth", The University has presumably since forgotten that he was down there). 7) The Lackless box contains the name of the moon and the key to reuniting faerie and human realms.
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Sep 4, 2011 18:27
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Kvothe, "My first girlfriend turned into the moon".
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Oct 4, 2011 05:22
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Dominion posted:I think it's important to remember that everything we know about Kvothe's past is told to us by Kvothe himself. So of course he's the best at everything, and of course he comes out looking great from everything, because that's how Kvothe is telling it to Chronicler. If this were true Rothfuss would still be a bad writer. In order to pull off the unreliable narrator schtick you have to drop hints and clues that what we're hearing isn't true. The Chronicler should be thinking to himself that things Kvothe is saying just don't match up, or there should be internal inconsistencies. Kvothe just lying and then on the last page going "nah I'm just kidding you" is not good storytelling.
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Oct 17, 2011 04:44
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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. "I have known her longer, my smile said. True, you have been inside the circle of her arms, tasted her mouth, felt the warmth of her, and that is something I have never had. But there is a part of her that is only for me. You cannot touch it, no matter how hard you might try. And after she has left you I will still be here, making her laugh. My light shining in her. I will still be here long after she has forgotten your name."
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Mar 8, 2012 00:04
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soru posted:Off topic: I just realized this and I'm an idiot for being so slow, but.. this is the Cthaeh, isn't it? A lone tree in the middle of a field of long grass. I don't know, I thought Kvothe was naked with an enormous erection the entire time he was in Fairieland.
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Mar 8, 2012 23:51
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Kynetx posted:I thought the Man Mothers theme was pretty stupid, but if a culture spent every not-killing moment actively slinging goo at eachother, they'd never observe the loving=baby manufacturing correlation. It's still stupid, but the tortured logic works. Nah, it's pretty stupid. At the very least their culture would have noticed that none of the cad ladies/ugly people seem to be popping out kids and put two and two together. I could maybe buy the scenario if this was some tiny pre-writting civilization utterly separated from other societies, but this is a worldly advanced culture. As for Denna, I think Rothfuss wants to waive the attraction off as a "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "true love is blind" type thing. Kvothe and Denna love each other just because, however they're so proud that they say mean things to each other and never admit their secret love. I think. Maybe Pat actually expected us to also fall in love with Denna?
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May 2, 2012 23:37
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I have a new favorite Denna theory after seeing some of the discussion in that re-read. Previously Denna had asked Kvothe's student friends if there was a type of magic where writing something down could cause it to happen. In their last encounter in the book Denna gets really angry when Kvothe is able to read the Yllish braid in her hair that says "lovely". She later braids "don't speak to me" after they have their stupid fight. She's been mind controlling him with magic hair braids into finding her irresistible! 
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May 3, 2012 23:19
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gouge away posted:This is what I took from the book, it's just another case of Rothfuss seeing women as "the Other" and not normal like every dude ever born. They exist solely to be Kvothe's ninja skill teachers slash gently caress buddies, and the bizarre notion about how babies are made is just an afterthought stuck in there to give their culture some color, painting the matriarchal society as silly and narcissistic. Imagine there's this race of super hot ninjas who want to have sex with guys at the drop of a hat. And here's the best part: they don't see men as having any connection with reproduction! If you knock up a lady ninja and skip town, she won't see any problem with it!
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May 17, 2012 01:05
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On the last page Kvothe goes "Nah I was just loving with you guys, none of that really happened" and walks out of the bar. This somehow redeems all flaws with the story up until this point.
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Oct 7, 2012 01:19
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Yeah but it's a confused, half-legendary reputation with a mythic quality that suggests he wasn't a real person, let alone the guy who did half that stuff. If people told stories about you that were obviously conflicting and had an air of fantasy, and you had the chance to set the record straight with whatever version of the facts you wanted, it would make sense to jump at it. I don't know about you, but I'd make sure to include a torrent of mind numbing details regarding my personal finances and my weirdo relationship with an unlikeable lady in my fictional autobiography on how badass I am.
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Oct 7, 2012 23:03
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An entire advanced civilization not understanding how our species propagates does make perfect sense when you consider that some people believe in God. The logic is indisputable.
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Nov 11, 2012 03:55
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anathenema posted:The Ferretbrain Review is pretty good at summarizing what's the matter with it. The section on the Felurian here is brutal and perfectly sums up my issues with it.
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Nov 19, 2012 08:49
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Sophia posted:I think the one you're thinking of is: These passages in addition to the comparison of Denna to a jumpy deer that he has to sneak up on to not scare away, and his comparison of having sex with different women being like playing different instruments are really quite disturbing. I have some hope that the women's bodies are like instruments thing was supposed to interpreted by readers Kvothe being an idiot, but all the nice guy poo poo I just don't see being hand-waved away in the third book.
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Nov 21, 2012 00:14
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Kynetx posted:It'd be easy. It would just take someone he loves and respects to reject him and tell him that people aren't tools to be used for his amusement, thus causing some sort of introspective inventory of his actions. It would require careful writing to make it believable, but it could be done. Again though it'll be a lot easier to denounce Kvothe's womanizing tendencies than his weirdo friend-zoned views.
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Nov 22, 2012 21:36
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Denna is the hooker with a heart of gold that our young protagonist is secretly in love with, but this love is blocked by his jealousy of her sleeping with other people. It might be interesting if I hadn't met this character a dozen times over in other works of fiction. In the first book she was okay, if a little bland. By the second book however her every appearance derailed what little semblance of a plot was occurring.
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Dec 9, 2012 04:23
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Hughlander posted:I thought the whole thing there was it was another form of magic he's never heard of. Like you read what's in the knot subconsciously and it affects your perception. She writes pretty or whatever and people look at her and think she's pretty. I think she even asks some of Kvothe's friends if there's a kind of magic where if you write something it becomes true. I wouldn't be shocked if she was referring to the Ylish knots obliquely.
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Dec 10, 2012 23:23
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