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Chaglby posted:Nobody wants to hear that kid's stories, so why do I want to know how this dude saved a princess while rocking out a perfect solo on his lute after killing a dragon with a pen knife. It just doesn't seem like I could get into it at all. As far as I recall it doesn't even really go so far as to suggest that he really lies or exaggerates his accomplishments (which might make him a more interesting character). I think the way it's played in the book, other people are responsible for exaggerating his already-awesome deeds. The end result is that he ends up seeming even more like a Mary Sue -- guy does awesome things, gets praised as Even More Awesome. Mahlertov posted:That's... not an accurate description of the book at all. How about you read it then decide for yourself if you like it. Although your confirmation bias is probably be so strong at this point that you wouldn't let yourself like it even if it were appealing to you. I... think it's an accurate description of the book. The villains are one-dimensional (OkCupid profile -- likes: being bad / dislikes: Kvothe) and the protagonist is a badass with a natural knack for everything. If you're into the fantasy version of the Horatio Alger myth, you're going to enjoy this book, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's about as stone-cold straightforward as fantasy narratives get. The narrator hints at Kvothe's complex internal mental life, but the hints are expressed as the sort of angst that an adolescent confuses for emotional depth. Melche posted:He's the most boringly static character ever, his enemies are just straight up bad, stupid people, his best friends are nonentity sidekicks. It's a pretty fundamental flaw for a book about what made him the man he is, that should be entirely character driven.
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Nov 15, 2010 20:18
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I'm almost 300 pages in, and nothing has happened. I just finished Joseph Abercrombie's trilogy before starting The Wise Man's Fear, and Rothfuss is looking pretty weak in comparison. There is no narrative momentum, the supporting characters are flat, and the primary conflict that has consumed the last two books has the feeling of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau pulling pranks on each other in Grumpy Old Men. Is this Sucker Punch -- are the tired tropes deliberately consuming the story entirely? Am I being trolled?
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Apr 7, 2011 20:56
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Rothfuss tells a pretty good story But he really doesn't! I'm not sure how our expectations got so low for storytelling, but The Wise Man's Fear isn't so much a coherent story as it is a sequence of unrelated vignettes. The first three to four hundred pages are Laurel and Hardy-style antics without any consequences or bearing on the larger narrative. Worse still, as they're happening, you fully recognize that they won't have any meaningful relationship to what little larger storyline there is. This is the exact opposite of competent storytelling -- nothing is meaningful, there's no relationship between individual anecdotes, and there's little to no persistent characterization. One minute Kvothe is a sassy student, then he's a thoughtful troubadour, then he's a kung-fu master, then he's a wizard, then he's a Don Juan, then he's a stone-cold killer, and then he's a resigned innkeeper. Rothfuss is literally writing as if he's Napoleon Dynamite explaining gender dynamics to Pedro: "You know like numchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... girls only want boyfriends who have good skills." Between the lovely writing, the inconsistent characterization, and the casual misogyny, I thought it might be a deliberate send-up of tired fantasy tropes, but I've come to the conclusion that it wasn't deliberate at all. It's like a Michael Bay movie, but somehow more repulsive. Michael Bay at least recognizes what he's doing and actively panders; Rothfuss is just providing a window into the dark depths of the mind of a goon. This book is like a how-to guide on how to be stunted. 
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Apr 12, 2011 20:37
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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? This is both condescending and misleading. "The death of the author" doesn't suggest that we read with an uncritical eye or waste our time reading pap. People have a limited amount of free time, and it's pretty valid for someone to not want to waste their time reading the wish-fulfillment fantasies of someone suffering from a severe case of arrested development. If you want to pull the relativism card, consider that there's a reason that you're posting about this book in particular rather than some random Doctor Who fanfiction. People have limited time & limited bandwidth to devote to reading lovely novels, even if there's some pomo lesson to be gleaned from them.
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Jul 17, 2011 09:02
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Former Everything posted:I don't get it. You don't write an unreliable narrator who, as a legend in his own time, constantly points out all of his/her failures to the audience. That's pretty much the opposite of an unreliable narrator in this vein. You don't write an unreliable narrator with a helpful sidekick who constantly points out the lies and exaggerations to the reader. I think it's probably much more interesting to contrast the fantastic nature of Kvothe's story with the reality of the present timeline, and throw in the sense of some impending conflict that will ultimately settle the matter of Kvothe's true nature one way or another. The lovely thing about this theory is that there are so many disparate plot threads and the framing story is so light on detail that it literally won't matter if Kvothe turns out to be an unreliable narrator. If, in the next book, you discover that Kvothe is basically a college dropout with a penchant for fibbing and none of it ever happened, so what? Because the framing story is so weak, it's tantamount to ending the series with "and then he woke up, and realized it was all a dream". In the absence of a strong overarching narrative, if the anecdotes (which comprise most of the text) are false, who cares? Yes, there are hints that Kvothe isn't what he purports to be; but after two books of "hints", it is becoming increasingly apparent that these are JJ Abrams, Lost style amateur-hour narrative poo poo where Rothfuss is just throwing "intrigue" at the wall and seeing what sticks. Compare and contrast to Abercrombie, the GRRM, or even Brandon Sanderson (uck), and it's pretty evident that Rothfuss is floundering when it comes to stitching the anecdotes together into a novel.
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Jul 18, 2011 05:40
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BananaNutkins posted:Nothing about art is ever objective. College literature professors might tell you otherwise, but there is value to be found in anything ever written if it makes a connection with a reader. Cormack feels too pretentious for me to enjoy. I never said he wasn't a brilliant writer, because he's obvious made an impact on you and others. I, however, gag at his rambling comma free slapdash gumbo of cool sounding words. I also dislike beat poetry, Lady Gaga, and people who think art is objective. Here is my fantasy novel: "argle blarge wubble wubble" I assert that this is a better fantasy novel than Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Who are you to tell me I'm wrong? Art is subjective. p.s. If it seems like we're unnecessarily re-treading old ground: aesthetic relativism in a forum dedicated to criticism and discussion of the arts needs to go the way of the Dodo. And if it keeps being advanced and accepted with a straight face, it apparently hasn't! Metonymy fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 18:34
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