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I just finished The Name of the Wind and was wondering if anyone has written an exhaustively researched essay explaining why the gently caress it's such a popular book and one of if not the highest rates fantasy novels on goodreads? From what I gather there's a lot of sex in the second book but the first one reads like an E/N thread from 10 years ago. In fact, take out the magic and Besides that, I don't think I've ever read anything quite like Deoch's speech explaining why there is absolutely nothing Denna can do to earn a living besides her bizarre short-term high-class escort gig. It's especially jarring when Kvothe's other potential love interest is a university student notable for little else besides being young, attractive, and having her life saved by Kvothe when she was too paralyzed by fear to move. Well, ok, maybe he has a point then. Still, it's like he smashed the fourth wall to pieces just to give a lame excuse for why he's writing such godawful female characters. 
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Jan 1, 2018 18:54
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Look he is a feminist because he said he is, and because Kvothe got magically drunk but wasn't a rapist while drunk. Or drugged, or whatever. No, I haven't. I just read a bit of the original thread. Actually, I partly got around to reading it because Patrick Rothfuss' review of The Lies of Locke Lamora is absolutely glowing (and the first to show up), even including three things that are definitely better about Scott Lynch's book: quote:1. The beginning of his book is stronger than mine. The whole time I was reading about Kvothe's time in Tarbean I was just thinking how much better the story of Locke's childhood is. Actually, I had thought that it came out after the Name of the Wind too, but no, Locke Lamora was published first. And the Tarbean part isn't even particularly bad, it just turns out to be largely pointless like most of the things that happen in Name of the Wind. Also, that review is kind of funny after reading this post: Dienes posted:Rothfuss has reviewed hundreds of books on Goodreads, and those that he's bothered to give a star rating are nearly always 5-stars. It really reeks of someone trying to suck up to other authors. Patrick Rothfuss posted:There is nothing I don't like in this book. Seriously. Okay. Fine. One tiny *tiny* quibble. He has reviewed over 600 titles with an average rating of 4.65.
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Jan 1, 2018 19:21
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It’s going to be like wandering onto an internet porn site and seeing a video of a girl I had a crush on in high school. You probably knew someone like her. The smart girl. The shy girl. The one who wore glasses and was a little socially awkward. The one who screwed up the curve in chemistry so you got an A- instead of an A. She was a geek girl before anybody knew what a geek girl was. And that was kinda awesome, because you were a geek boy before being a geek was culturally acceptable. You liked her because she was funny. And she was smart. And you could actually talk to her. And she read books. And sure, she was girl-shaped, and that was cool. And she was cute, in an understated, freckly way. And sometimes you’d stare at her breasts when you were supposed to be paying attention in biology. But you were 16. You stared at everyone’s breasts back then. And yeah, you had some fantasies about her, because, again, you were 16. But they were fairly modest fantasies about making out in the back of a car. Maybe you’d get to second base. Maybe you could steal third if you were lucky. And maybe, just maybe, something delightful and terrifying might happen. And yeah, it would probably be awkward and fumbling at times, but that’s okay because she’d be doing half the fumbling too. Because the only experience either one of you had was from books. And afterwards, if you make a Star Wars joke, you know she’ll get it, and she’ll laugh…. That’s the girl you fell in love with in high school. You didn’t have a crush on her because she was some simmering pool of molten sex. You loved her because she was subtle and sweet and smart and special. So you stroll onto this porn site, and there she is. Except now she’s wearing a thong and a black leather halter top. She’s wearing gently caress-me red lipstick and a lot of dark eye makeup. Her breasts are amazing now, proud and perfectly round. Someone’s taught her to dance, and she does it well. She’s flexible and tan. She has a flat midriff and walks like a high-class Vegas stripper. Her eyes are dark and smouldering. She has a riding crop, and she likes to be tied up, and her too-red mouth forms a perfect circle as she sighs and moans, and tosses her head in a performance designed to win any number of academy awards…. And what’s the problem with this? Well… in some ways, nothing. What you’ve found is perfectly good porn. Maybe even great porn. But in other ways the problem is blindingly obvious. This girl has nothing in common with your high-school crush except for her social security number. Everything you loved about her is gone. We loved the sweet, shy, freckly girl. We still remember her name, and after all these years she lives close to our heart. Seeing her in lipstick and stiletto heels dancing on a pole is like watching Winnie the Pooh do heroin and then glass someone in a bar fight. It just isn’t something that I look forward to seeing…. And that’s how I’m going to feel when I watch the Hobbit.
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Jan 23, 2018 16:51
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PJOmega posted:It's funny/sad seeing all the people happily saying they've read the first two books multiple times and praising him as an author without equal in the literary world. Well he started The Name of the Wind when he was 20 years old and it took him 15 years to finish, since it was apparently a "hot mess" in its first draft. He was nearly 40 by the time he published the second book. Maybe making what I presume to be a fair amount of cash writing out his juvenile fantasies to an adoring audience finally helped him get over the tragedy of not getting to touch girls in high school? Also Embassytown is quite good and entertaining and there's only one awkward sex scene that I can remember.
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Jan 24, 2018 15:10
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I didn't dislike Name of the Wind much at first. I thought the pacing was off, and some of the dialog was certainly insipid, but I kept going based on the overwhelming praise it received assuming that interesting things would happen. It was more by the time I got to the end and read those pages of horse bartering and country bumpkin talk and the blue fire that was definitely a sign of the Chandrian but then was actually a dragon not related to the Chandrian but still the Chandrian had actually been there and left a clue... or did they? Well, that's when I realized the payof wasn't coming and started to think about what I'd actually read. I briefly considered reading the second book but the plot summary is enough for me. It was never a page turner at any point, though. By contrast, I think I read each of the Black Company books in less than a week. They're not to everyone's taste and I wouldn't argue that they're groundbreaking pieces of literature but the plot drat well moves forward.
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Jan 24, 2018 16:57
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I hope the screen adaption shows that Kvothe actually is an unreliable narrator through the facial expressions of disgust on everyone he talks to. Even better, everyone in the first two books is in on a great big practical joke, pretending to humour the precocious prodigy while secretly setting him up for failure. In the third book, he uses his sex ninja training to fight an ancient evil (that he unwittingly released in the first place) and gets his rear end whipped so hard that he loses his music and magic and unleashes a plague of demon spiders on the world. In the final chapter, Bast convinces Kvothe to challenge the Chandrian to a final showdown, only to stab him in the back (to his face!) at the last minute. Satisfied with the sacrifice, the Chandrian clean up the demon spider mess before loving off and everyone is happy again, the end.
Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Jan 31, 2018 |
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Jan 31, 2018 14:29
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I'll watch the TV series if Eddie Redmayne plays Kvothe and also completely changes his dialog.
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Feb 1, 2018 03:46
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Well if you're tired of cringe-worthy sex scenes but still want male power fantasy that's less juvenile than Patrick Rothfuss you can read the Witcher novels instead. Wait, does unicorn sex count as cringe-worthy?Atlas Hugged posted:Even if you're right that means that the books have nothing positive to say on physical relationships for 95% of them. The Witcher's message about sex: casual unprotected sex is great and risk-free as long as you're a wizard or genetically engineered mutant.
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Feb 3, 2018 11:54
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BananaNutkins posted:Good decision. Black Company is just ok. Ftfy it's a good series and much more readable than the inexplicably beloved Malazan Book of the Homebrew D&D campaign, although admittedly it's not great if you care for the sorcery part of swords & sorcery most.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:02
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Does it have something to do with how often Locke gets beaten to within an inch of his life but still survives with no long-term consequences?
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Feb 13, 2018 23:39
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Once I read a review that said they loved Name of the Wind for all of the vibrant and compelling side characters and I laughed out loud. Does Kvothe ever do anything to help his friends at university or show any interest whatsoever in their lives?
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Feb 14, 2018 14:42
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Actually he lost his magic and music by picking a fight with the evil tree. It just hosed.him.right.up and the worst part is everyone laughs when he tries to warn then about the Kung Fu demon tree. Plus it's actually only 10 years old it just grew really fast.
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Feb 16, 2018 22:20
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In book four, mature student Kvothe returns to the university to complete his thesis on the Chandrian but is forced into poorly-paid assistantships to cover his growing tuition fees. Kvothe's advisors prove to be no help as he continues to struggle to find enough extant literature to complete his review chapter. When his first submitted manuscript receives a scathing rejection from referee #2, Kvothe suspects the work of his lifelong nemesis Ambrose - but can he prove it time to publish a paper before his final year of funding runs out?
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Mar 8, 2018 17:46
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I don't know how I'll find the time to read the third book, maybe as a break between marathon Star Citizen sessions?
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Jul 24, 2018 04:17
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Ccs posted:The executives greenlighting these fantasy series are idiots. They went "Hey everyone likes Game of Thrones, let's make that type of show!" Uh, there are TV series for the Witcher and the Black Company that are supposed to be in production now. Both series pre-date GOT and are grimgrey if not full dark and less of a chore to read than GRRM's unedited tomes.
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Nov 16, 2018 23:50
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Imagine a thousand page epic about a sumptuously feast with GRRM writing the florid descriptions of the food and drink and Steven Erikson providing the witty banter.Benson Cunningham posted:There is no world where Sanderson and Rothfuss are defensible and Malazan isn't. Rothfuss is relatively concise and doesn't have innumerable intersecting plot threads (because there's only one and it never goes anywhere). Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Nov 21, 2018 |
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Nov 21, 2018 08:53
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The Witcher is all the Slavic mythology you could want and needed a map for the improbably good video game adaptation. Personally I prefer maps for plots with long journeys, just like I'd prefer a sketch or floor plan to detailed multi-page descriptions of buildings with complicated but plot-relevant architecture.
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Nov 24, 2018 00:32
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I bet GRRM would actually write a detailed cannibalistic feast with great gusto.
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Dec 22, 2018 04:50
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Benson Cunningham posted:GRRM has written a ton of legitimate books, especially before Game of Thrones. Which people would still suck the dick of if it wasn't so popular. I liked Hunter's Run even though it was written by three people for some reason.
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Dec 22, 2018 06:31
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I was hate-reading some goodreads reviews the other day and anyway do you think Rothfuss is above or below Ursula Le Guin on the all-time list?
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Feb 4, 2019 05:57
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ElGroucho posted:What do you think is behind that secret door? I bet its plot progression. Nah, it's just a sweaty threesome of Denna, Ambrose and Auri.
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Feb 9, 2019 04:21
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Speaking of Rothfuss' deep and compelling female characters, I was trying to think of whether they passes the Bechdel test and someone did the work to check. The answer is hahaha are you kidding? I doubt it even passes a weaker version of two female characters discussing something other than the main character.http://bunwat.booklikes.com/post/700867/thoughts-on-name-of-the-wind-and-the-bechdel-test posted:Among many other things, this got me to thinking about the Bechdel Test. (Or to honor Allison Bechdel’s preference, the Bechdel/Wallace test since it was actually invented by her friend Liz Wallace.) Name of the Wind most certainly fails, in fact it fails pretty spectacularly. I was a few chapters in before I started to wonder where all the women went, so I might have missed something early on but as far as I can tell the first female character appears after seven chapters, there are nine chapters before a female character speaks, forty chapters before a female character has an actual conversation, sixty chapters before two female characters appear in the same scene and speak to one another and never do more than two women appear in any scene nor do they speak to one another about anything except a man.
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Feb 9, 2019 14:45
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branedotorg posted:is PR the new GRRM? GRRM had a writing career before ASoIaF and he co-wrote a decent novel (Hunter's Run) after starting ASoIaF so no. Rothfuss is more like the Vermeer of writing, see.
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Feb 21, 2019 05:54
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GRRM dies of a heart attack and wills ASoIaF to Brandon Sanderson, who becomes the first literary multi-billionaire by writing three alternative storylines in a mere half-decade. Rothfuss writes one more unpopular novel(la) about some lovely side character before taking over GRRM's football blog.
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Feb 24, 2019 00:21
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Actually it's because Rothfuss is a huge loser neckbeard and he was too embarrassed to write all of that pathetic wish fulfiment into his first book, because really his own undergrad experience was a tale of unrequited love. Speaking of the Chandrian, remember that time at the end of the first book where he went to investigate blue fire, and it turned out to be a completely unrelated dragon, and he slept with Denna but didn't, and actually there was something related to the Chandrian in a house in that village but he didn't notice because the entire first book is like a dystopian RPG where your character is too hungry to be able to pursue the main questline and has to complete godawful side quests just to survive. e: oh I see now, the Kingkiller Chronicles is basically an early access trilogy.
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Feb 25, 2019 03:05
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The TV show is pretty good so you don't have to read the books. Let's say Rothfuss has incurable writer's block and never published another book and some enterprising shameless money-grubber tries to finish the series for him. Are there comparable examples of a series finishing when the plot is in such bad shape and has barely progressed two novels in?
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Mar 2, 2019 04:52
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It turns out that the shipwreck part is where he killed the king, who was actually an insane marooned sailor, and the cobblestones are actually pebbles on a beach in a literal square made of driftwood.
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Mar 10, 2019 16:28
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pseudanonymous posted:I wouldn't call what Sanderson does writing per se. Still, there's a happy medium between one bad book every 10 years and 10 bad books every year that Rothfuss could aim for. Are you saying that you want Rothfuss to write a bad book every year?
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Apr 6, 2019 05:12
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Is there even anything magical or fantastical in that book? I can't imagine the reaction if Auri were a mad grad student living on the sewers under a bio lab. Note that I didn't say former student; of course she's still enrolled and owes years of tuition because her advisor forgot about her.
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Apr 20, 2019 01:01
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My favourite part about that episode is that Kvothe went there to investigate the blue fire that the dragon was spouting but it had nothing to do with the Chandrian. However, there was a house in that village that did have some connection but Kvothe didn't investigate it and the story failed to progress in any meaningful way. Second favourite is the country bumpkin conversation derail and third is the painfully long horse trading session.
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Apr 25, 2019 05:09
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Imagine if you took the colourful characters and memorable nations and leaders from the Witcher, the clean prose and uncluttered yet soulful narrative of ancient magical realms from Earthsea, and the fantastic rags-to-riches swashbuckling set pieces of Locke Lamora's bildungsroman, doused them in gasoline, set them on fire and then tried to put the ashes back together - that's The Name of the Wind.
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Apr 27, 2019 04:20
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Random Series is a brilliant trilogy though. The PoV narrators in Stochastic Sequence are delightfully unpredictable while the tangled web of deceit in Deterministic Parallels is a joy to unravel due to - and not despite - the unusual narration explaining each twist before it happens.
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Apr 28, 2019 15:08
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Gitro posted:It's the book forum not the sex forum. If they ever merge SA will be annihilated in a big horny explosion. Counterpoint: ElGroucho posted:Let me tell you guys something
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May 7, 2019 04:58
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When I write my memoir the first thing I'm going to do is painstakingly detail exactly how much change I had in my wallet/pocket 20 years ago with reference to the inflation rate of core goods during the intervening years.
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Jul 15, 2019 05:32
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But Malazan is also a D&D campaign and while I think the writing is atrocious and can't get past the first 1.2 books, they undeniably have characters and plots.
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Aug 9, 2019 21:32
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You have to milk him gently, moron.
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Sep 10, 2019 07:58
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my bony fealty posted:yes. it only gets worse. stop now while you still can. So are the Witcher novels, but they're much more entertaining and spawned a surprisingly well-written videogame series.
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Nov 27, 2019 06:42
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My underwear tenants are special, hell yeah. e: sorry that was meant to be Rothfuss' line in this story:pseudanonymous posted:Also the pizza delivery guy actually turned out to be a girl, just a tomboy type one, but she took off her hat and it was like that movie that was a ripoff of Shakespeare, and she could tell just by looking at Rothfuss he was a sex haver, and that means she wanted to have sex with him, not that she was a slut or anything, because he's absolutely not a misogynist, and that's why he has to bring up that he's a feminist so often. Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 23:19
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Now I'm imagining GRRM and Rothfuss collaborating. Thanks for that.
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May 2, 2020 13:54
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PJOmega posted:If it wasn't Rothfuss I could see it as being an ironic borderline artful knock on nerd nostalgia culture consisting of expensive plastic tchotchkes to cover all the Ikea furniture in your apartment. Childhood cereal boxes are on the same artistic merit as any random Funko Pop piece. I've sold empty Booberry/Frankenberry/Count Chocula boxes in shadow boxes at ludicrous markup because nerd consumer culture is disgusting. Why the gently caress would you decorate your own house ironically as a fully grown adult?
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May 12, 2020 16:48
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