It's a blog of reviews and thoughts on books I've just read, whether recently released or not. It's a blog about old favorites that I think everyone in the universe should know and love. It's a blog about reading and writing, things I think are glorious and things that make me wince. There may even at some point be a manatee.
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| See? You didn't even have to be all that patient. |
There's no specific genre focus; I like to read many different kinds of books, although it will probably skew mainly toward fantasy/SF. Sometimes the posts will be more review-like in nature; other times they may consist entirely of me flailing about how much I love a particular series or author. Sometimes they'll focus on the book as a whole, or focus on one specific aspect. Contents will be subject to my whim. I'm always open to suggestions, but my reading list grows every time I get within fifty feet of a Barnes and Noble, so it may be awhile before I get to them.
Welcome to the Stacks.
The Wise Man's Fear is, for those who don't know, the second book in Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles; the first being The Name of the Wind. It centers around a man named Kvothe--something of a living legend--as he tells the story of his life to a scribe. Most of the series is in flashback mode, with occasional interspersed chapters dealing with the present (which has a plot of its own going on). The series as a whole has gotten glowing recommendations and praise from quite a few people, and it sounded interesting, so I looked into it.
I had a complicated relationship with The Name of the Wind. On one hand, I loved the book. Rothfuss's writing is great, and the story as a whole was well-paced and interesting. But there was one glaring flaw that smacked me in the face practically every time I turned the page, and that is that Kvothe is something of a Mary Sue. ("The term "MarySue" is generally slapped on a character who is important in the story, possesses unusual physical traits, and has an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature.") Tragic backstory? Check. Unusual physical appearance--in this case red hair--mentioned multiple times? Check. But the main issue I had with the story is that Kvothe is instantly good at absolutely everything he tries. When the child (and then teenage) protagonist is better (within a matter of days) than adults who have been studying for years, it does make you wonder. I ended up torn, because one minute I was thinking, "THIS STORY IS THE BEST THING EVER," and then next I'd be thinking, "OH GOD KVOTHE, AGAIN, SERIOUSLY?"
So I took up The Wise Man's Fear with some trepidation. I knew I'd enjoy the book enough to not chuck it across the room, but whether or not it could rise above Name of the Wind's tendency to idealize Kvothe was another matter.
At first it seemed like a vast improvement. Kvothe, while still better at most things than the average person, is actually shown struggling to learn certain things--and taking time to learn them, rather than having the equivalent of a three-minute training montage. I was perhaps unbecomingly pleased to see him actually lose a magical scuffle with my favorite character, but the high point for me came when he decided to learn a certain fighting style and got his behind handed to him by a ten-year-old girl.
Rothfuss's writing is just as lovely as in Name of the Wind, with my favorite part being a description of the library.
"Then there were the bad neighborhoods. Sections of the Archives that were forgotten, or neglected, or simply too troublesome to deal with at the moment. These were places where books were organized under old catalogs or under no catalog at all.
There were walls of shelves like mouths with missing teeth, where long-gone scrivs had cannibalized an old catalog to bring books into whatever system was fashionable at the time..."
And Kvothe, who at this point in the story is in his late teens, has developed the occasional snarky edge to his narration, which oddly enough made him more likeable for me. (Maybe I appreciate snark too much.)
However, the story still smacked me in the face with WHAT at certain points, namely having to do with Kvothe's romantic relationships. My main trouble here is this: EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER OF ANY IMPORTANCE WHO ISN'T UNDER FIFTEEN OR OVER FORTY HAS A THING FOR KVOTHE.
Let's have a tally, shall we?
There's Denna, Kvothe's main love interest/quasi-obsession. Which doesn't stop him from sleeping with a lot of other women, but all right, fair enough; they don't have anything agreed upon and she's hardly waiting around for him. This one, I'll give him.
Another student at the university, who thankfully chooses another partner midway through the book.
Then he's propositioned out of the blue by his moneylender/friend (at this point I started rolling my eyes), followed by the immortal faerie who destroys men, and several women from the tribe he goes to train in fighting with. And to that I have to say, "REALLY?" Really? ALL the women? And none of them, conveniently enough, seem to have a problem with the others/want anything more than a quick fling. I understand that Kvothe is supposed to be more awesome than bacon, but does everyone in this universe have a thing for redheads?
This is one case in which I definitely preferred kid-Kvothe to teenage Kvothe. Kid-Kvothe might have learned the whole of arcana with no more effort than batting his eyelashes, but at least he didn't cause fevers in everything female that moved.
There is one thing that occurred to me, and that's that the frame dictates that the past is in first person. Kvothe is telling his own story here, and may be inclined to embroider the tale to make himself look more impressive. He is, after all, telling by what all accounts is a legendary past. The other thing that makes me inclined to withhold judgment is that Kvothe is headed for disaster--that's not a spoiler; it's apparent by the end of the first page of the first book that he's had some sort of catastrophic fall--and maybe that will knock some humility into him. Certainly present-Kvothe isn't anywhere near as confident as past-Kvothe.
So, did I like The Wise Man's Fear? Yes. Will I read the next one when it comes out? Definitely. Will I start it, like I did this one, with some trepidation? A bit. Hopefully it won't be enough to overshadow everything else. It hasn't been yet, but there were points in the book where it came close.
In the next volume, I hope for less god-mod-ladies'-man-Kvothe and more things like this:
"No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection."
