Patrick Rothfuss

The Kingkiller Chronicle — (2007-2011) Publisher: My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as "quothe." Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I've had more names than anyone has a right to. The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it's spoken, can mean The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree. "The Flame" is obvious if you've ever seen me. I have red hair, bright. If I had been born a couple of hundred years ago I would probably have been burned as a demon. I keep it short but it's unruly. When left to its own devices, it sticks up and makes me look as if I have been set afire. "The Thunder" I attribute to a strong baritone and a great deal of stage training at an early age. I've never thought of "The Broken Tree" as very significant. Although in retrospect, I suppose it could be considered at least partially prophetic. My first mentor called me E'lir because I was clever and I knew it. My first real lover called me Dulator because she liked the sound of it. I have been called Shadicar, Lightfinger, and Six-String. I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them. But I was brought up as Kvothe. My father once told me it meant "to know." I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned. I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me. So begins the tale of Kvothe — from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But The Name of the Wind is so much more — for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's legend.

Forthcoming: book 3
Available for download at Audible.com

The Name of the Wind

Due to the mediocrity that the fantasy genre has been tending towards lately, I most times shy away from a lot of the more recent, big door-stopper, ever-lasting epics.

Then, every few years, a book like The Name of the Wind comes along and reminds me of why I love fantasy to start with.

To me, when fantasy is written well, you almost believe it, like it's some big historic narrative of a forgotten legend, all dust-covered, yellow-paged, and long-lost among other gargantuan tomes on a shadowy, back-wall-book-shelf in the basement of a monstrous and aging library. The prose, language, setting, creatures, and characters all come together and take you to a place so fantastic it can't be real, but you almost feel like you're really there anyway.

If you could just simply time-travel inter-dimensionally, you really could be sipping an evening ale at a table in the Waystone Inn and wondering why the warm fire in the hearth isn't making you feel as cozy as it did before the man you know as Kote, but is really Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as Quothe) started telling his story. 

That's how a fantasy was intended to make you feel, and that's the way Mr. Rothfuss tells his tale.
—Greg Hersom

The Name of the Wind

You know how sometimes a book, or a movie, or a concert gets so hyped up in the press and you have such high expectations that when you finally get around to reading/seeing it, it disappoints? That's what I was worried might happen when I decided to read The Name of the Wind. I purposely came to it late, hoping to wait until Patrick Rothfuss was nearly finished with the trilogy before I starting it. But, the book has received so much attention that it became inexcusable for me, as the editor of this website, not to read it. So I did — in two days. (It's a huge book.)

And I'm very happy to report that The Name of the Wind did not disappoint — I was completely enthralled. The pace was quick and never lagged. The plot was tight and had just the right amount of mystery — I always understood what was going on, but Rothfuss regularly added new elements, twists, and layers to keep me wondering where this was going and what would happen next. In fact, by the end of the book, there are more unanswered questions than answered ones. Throughout, the writing style was smooth and pleasant, with enough wit, humor, foreshadowing, and artistry to be intellectually stimulating, but never pretentious. Furthermore, the magic system in Rothfuss's world is thoroughly explained to us, bit by bit, and it is complicated and makes sense.

Perhaps most important, Mr Rothfuss writes excellent characters. I especially appreciated what he did with his hero. Kvothe's circumstances are familiar; he's an exceptionally bright kid whose parents are killed by something evil, nobody cares for him, he manages to get into magic school on long odds, he has trouble fitting in with both students and teachers, he makes two close friends and one rich and handsome enemy from a powerful family, he's obsessed with finding out about the evil people who killed his parents, he regularly gets punished for his exploits at school, he has no clue about girls, and he actually meets one who lives in the pipes under the school ... Hmmm... This does sound familiar.

But I'll bet that most people who read The Name of the Wind never thought of Harry Potter, because Kvothe and his world are new and refreshing. Kvothe is a product of his liberal education and a lot of time spent trying to survive on his own as a beggar. Sometimes he is selfish, sometimes he is cruel, sometimes he does the right thing. At one point in the book, while Kvothe was living on the streets, he had an opportunity to help someone in distress (a particular distress that Kvothe himself had experienced). I was nervous — worried that Rothfuss would ruin his careful characterization by having Kvothe perform a heroic deed too soon. But, no, Kvothe pulled a Kitty Genovese, which gave me a deeper respect for Mr Rothfuss. During Kvothe's maturation, we see him make more right choices and fewer wrong ones, but he is complex and inconsistent enough to make us lack confidence that he's going to turn out okay. And that makes for a very interesting story.

I'm very much looking forward to continuing this mystery; so much so that I'll pre-order the hardback of The Wise Man's Fear (something I rarely do). Patrick Rothfuss is a much-needed bright young star in the fantasy field. Let's hope that he can keep it up! —Kat Hooper

The Name of the Wind

Over Christmas break I managed to catch up on some of the books that other reviewers have raved about that hadn’t yet made it to the top of my TBR mountain. The best book by far was Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. Since Greg, Kat and Angus have already reviewed this book, I don’t think much needs to be said at this point about the plot. Instead I want to respond to the other reviews, which I had not read in detail until after finishing the book.

I agree with Kat that Rothfuss has done something special. I can usually spot a Harry Potter knockoff at 20 paces, but even though there are some superficial similarities between the characters and plot devices, at no point when I was reading The Name of the Wind did I think of Harry Potter. Rothfuss has taken the stock ingredients of fantasy and, like a master chef, created something new and surprising with them. For a book of several hundred pages, The Name of the Wind reads remarkably fast, as the story pours out of Kvothe, an autobiography to set to truth all the rumors and guesses.

Like Angus, I had some problems with Kvothe’s development romantically. Boys of that age should be a little bit more hormonal than he is, and I have a hard time believing that someone with his fortitude in other areas — that whipping scene for example — doesn’t have the courage to try for a kiss from a woman with whom he is besotted. I also agree with Angus that the tale would have benefited from more detail about the big baddies, the Chandrian. Right now they are sort of a nebulous evil. The tension would be heightened by knowing more about the antagonist.

Those details aside, Greg is right when he said that books like this are why people read fantasy. I am anxiously awaiting the next installment in the story. If Rothfuss keeps up the quality of this storytelling throughout the next two books, I think the next thing he should write is a letter to Peter Jackson, with the offer of a movie deal. This is epic fantasy at its finest. —Ruth Arnell

The Name of the Wind

This is without a doubt the best first fantasy book by an author that I have ever read. I will not bother to summarize the plot herein, as that has been done by other reviewers on this site and by the publisher’s blurb above. Rather, it is important to note what Patrick Rothfuss has done. He has really and truly started to tell a story. I don’t mean just any story, but a story from the days where people didn’t read, and sat around fires at night with children paying rapt attention to the words that would drip like honey off the tongue of the story-teller. This is where Rothfuss’ success lies.

The Name of the Wind is a wonderful book, and it is, hopefully, the first of many for the newcomer Rothfuss. His style is elegant in its simplicity, lending itself to easy readability. His plot, namely a coming-of-age autobiography (at least so far) unfolds with ease and is not the complex, multiple character point-of-view epic to which I am accustomed (a la Martin, Erikson, and Wurts). It is a single point of view almost entirely throughout the book, except for very brief interludes, and this is a really refreshing change for a fantasy novel, and for novels in general. Beyond this, the story is told in the first person, as related by the main character, Kvothe, from the Waystone Inn. The last time I read the first person story-telling style being pulled off this well was when I read Huckleberry Finn in high school. I also really liked the short chapters, as that made the book easier to read. Long chapters without logical breaks are a pet peeve of mine.

Rothfuss switches easily from the first person to the third person when flipping back to the book’s “present” at the Waystone Inn, and, even more importantly, the character of Kvothe draws you in, and you see him grow. You see him make mistakes that a young man would likely make, and there is a palpable sense that Kvothe is a real person. The story itself actually has a lot of the fantasy stalwarts: the big evil (the Chandrian), a kindly wizard (arcanist, actually), the young lad bereft of parents (Kvothe) at an early age, and a love interest. What is different about this book is what Rothfuss does with them. It is like he has re-written the standard fantasy fare, and has renewed it. He took the clichés, and used them in a new way, and made it real. I particularly liked the use of humour and the legends used to explain some of the background to the story. There is also some lovely foreshadowing in the book’s “present” at the Waystone Inn. Rothfuss speaks knowingly of music. Rothfuss really “gets” the importance of music to a musician, and how it constantly calls and beckons, which, as I am a musician myself, I really appreciated.

My complaints are few, but they exist. They will likely be dealt with in the fullness of time, as Rothfuss matures as a writer (I’ll let you know next April, when The Wise Man's Fear comes out). Firstly, this is not a trilogy, and it should not have been published as one. It is very similar in structure to The Lord of the Rings, which although it had three volumes, was really just one story. The Kingkiller Chronicle is just such a story, and the reader is left dangling a bit, through no fault of the author, at the end of The Name of the Wind. It is not a cliffhanger, but more like the story stops, or has an interlude. To put two years between the publication of the first and second books is a bit unfair to the readers. Secondly, I get that Kvothe is poor, but this point is hammered at a bit too much in the latter half of the book. Thirdly, I found Kvothe’s interactions with women, and in particular, Denna (the love interest) a little unrealistic. Kvothe is a charming character, and can’t quite seem to make the leap to romance. However, to be fair, he is young in this book, and his life has been quite traumatic. Still, this point is deserving of particular attention. Fourthly, I was expecting more background development by the end of almost 700 pages, and I didn’t get it. Virtually nothing on the Chandrian, or the other evils noted near the beginning of the book, or in its middle. If I don’t get that in The Wise Man’s Fear, a whole star is coming off, and I mean that. The bones need some meat on them.

However, despite these faults, which are really quite minor, this is a book that I would recommend to just about anyone, even a fantasy newbie. It is very, very easy to read. There is virtually no sex, so younger teens could read it, and the violence, though present and detailed, is appropriate to the story. There is nothing gratuitous in this regard. This book gets four stars, and I expect the subsequent volumes to do better. Mr. Rothfuss has created some great expectations, and it is possible, just possible, that theWaystone Inn might join the likes of The Green Dragon and the other great inns and taverns of fantasy literature. —Angus Bickerton

The Wise Man's Fear

If, like me, you were so impressed with The Name of the Wind that you neglected all but the most pressing business until you turned the final page, you may have decided to give it a quick re-read in anticipation of the sequel. If you did, you probably spotted this quote in Chapter 43:

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

After a long but worthwhile wait, we now have the second novel in The Kingkiller Chronicle, and its title refers directly back to the quote: The Wise Man’s Fear. (And by the way, if you didn’t feel like rereading book one, Patrick Rothfuss posted a wonderful web comic recap on his blog).

Saying that the level of anticipation for The Wise Man’s Fear was high is an understatement, especially given that The Name of the Wind was only Patrick Rothfuss’ debut. It’s not as if this is the concluding volume of a long multi-volume saga, decades in the making. The Name of the Wind struck such a powerful chord with many readers that, before long, messages started popping up left and right, complaining that things were taking too long and couldn’t he write a bit more quickly?

Well, merciful Tehlu be praised, Patrick Rothfuss took his time, polishing and refining his manuscript until it stood up to his own standards. The result is The Wise Man’s Fear, a novel that for the most part fulfills the promise of The Name of the Wind. You’ll find the same sweeping prose, deft characterization, rousing adventure, emotional highs and lows, and just plain and simple gripping reading of the “I couldn’t put this book down even if my house caught fire around me” variety.

Also, there’s much more of it, in terms of sheer length. Weighing in at about 1,000 pages, The Wise Man’s Fear is a heftier tale with a much broader scope. Where most of The Name of the Wind was set in and around the University, the sequel starts off there but soon has Kvothe venturing out into the world. As a result, some of the blank spaces on the map start to get filled in, giving this fantasy world a welcome new level of depth. Make no mistake, Kvothe is still front and center, but the details of the world’s geography are starting to come into focus, as well as its history, with the central mystery still being the exact nature of the Chandrian and the Amyr.

And Kvothe... is still Kvothe. One of the most memorable characters to appear in fantasy in the last decade, he again carries the tale easily. Let’s not forget that The Name of the Wind’s blurb, as well as the title of the series, seemed to spell out several major plot points: anyone who read the back cover of The Name of the Wind knew the edited highlights of Kvothe’s life even before opening the book. How often do you see that, and even if you did, how often did it actually succeed?

Here, Patrick Rothfuss makes it work purely on the strength of his main character. Kvothe, telling his own story to the patient Chronicler, has so much sheer panache that his personality has the same effect as a minor tsunami on the people around him. In some ways, he’s like a taller, more musically gifted version of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan. Sure, when he describes a noble as being as “self-centered as a gyroscope”, you can’t help but think that this could easily apply to him too, but his charm, brilliance and inexorable forward momentum easily make up for it.

Then — next brilliant trick — to forestall those readers who might get annoyed at an impossibly brilliant and already semi-legendary character, the framing story shows us a much different present-day Kvothe, now going by the name Kote, who seems to be a shadow of his former self: a small town innkeeper with the lowest of profiles and the gentlest demeanour. The fact that we still don’t know exactly how we got from Kvothe the high-flying warrior-arcanist-singer to Kote the soft-spoken innkeeper creates the tension that makes these novels so powerful. Evil is abroad, war is coming, and Kvothe, so different from how he describes himself in his story, hints that he is somehow responsible — and, to top it all, we still don’t know exactly how and why. Maybe most disturbing (or exciting, depending on your perspective and amount of patience): if Kvothe is recounting his past to Chronicler in three days, does that mean that the real conclusion of the story, describing the current and future state of the world, will only follow in books 4, 5, 6... ?

Regardless,The Wise Man’s Fear is another excellent novel. Just getting to read more about the young, brilliant Kvothe at the University is a pleasure, although it did feel as if the first few hundred pages of this novel moved a bit more slowly and actually could have been part of the first book, with Kvothe’s eventual departure making a perfect starting point for the sequel. Then again, we know this is meant to be one long tale split across three days of narration by present-day Kvothe to Chronicler, so it makes sense to think of these books as one big story with somewhat arbitrary cut-off points. (And oh, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to mention that the ending of this novel is once again of the somewhat anti-climactic “and then they all went to sleep to continue the story the next day” variety.)

Patrick Rothfuss’s prose is still a pleasure to read. He does high comedy as expertly as heart-breaking tragedy. He occasionally throws out a sentence that’s so perfectly on point, it’s not hard to see why his book-signing events draw such huge crowds:

Hespe’s mouth went firm. She didn’t scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry.

If the plotting is sometimes a bit transparent, with the timing and sequence of some events being so convenient that it flirts with improbability, it’s all easy to forgive because — and this is really all that matters, in the end — The Wise Man’s Fear is more sheer fun to read than most fantasy novels I’ve read since — well, since The Name of the Wind, come to think of it. Plus, we finally get to read the bit about Felurian...

If you’re looking for solid, character-driven, consistently entertaining but occasionally quite dark fantasy that has more heart than several other series combined, you couldn’t do much better than Patrick Rothfuss’ KINGKILLER CHRONICLE. And now the long wait begins for book 3... —Stefan Raets

The Wise Man's Fear

CLASSIFICATION: There are different types of epic fantasy. There is the kind written by George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan and Steven Erikson, which feature huge casts of characters, multiple storylines and subplots, epic battles, and world-altering events. Then there is the kind that can be found in the Soldier Son trilogy by Robin Hobb, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series and The Imager Portfolio by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. This kind of epic fantasy is character-driven, intimate, introspective. The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss is of the latter variety with a little Harry Potter charm thrown into the mix. Regarding The Wise Man’s Fear specifically, there is a surprisingly gratuitous amount of sex in the book — tastefully done though I might add — the occasional curse word, and a few moments of dark violence, but for the most part the novel maintains a PG-13 rating.

FORMAT/INFO: The Wise Man’s Fear is 1008 pages long divided over a Prologue, 147 titled chapters, and an Epilogue. Like The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear is a framed story with the framing parts set during the novel’s present day and narrated in the third-person. The story that is framed, which comprises the majority of the novel, is narrated in the first-person via Kvothe. The Wise Man’s Fear is the second volume — or Day Two — in The Kingkiller Chronicle after The Name of the Wind. While The Wise Man’s Fear is a middle volume in a trilogy, the book is structured so it has its own beginning, middle and end. The Kingkiller Chronicle is set to conclude with the tentatively titled, The Doors of Stone.

March 1, 2011 marks the North American Hardcover publication of The Wise Man’s Fear via DAW. The UK version will be published on the same day via Gollancz.

ANALYSIS: To say that The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss is one of the most anticipated novels of the year is a bit of an understatement. Not only is The Wise Man’s Fear the sequel to The Name of the Wind, arguably the most hyped and successful fantasy debut ever, but the unexpectedly long wait between books has increased expectations even further. As readers may or may not remember, when The Name of the Wind was released in 2007, we were led to believe that the already written sequel would be published the following year. Instead, a one-year wait turned into four years. The reasons for the delay have been well-documented, but it basically came down to what was more important: rushing out a product as soon as possible or taking the necessary time to produce the best product possible? Personally, I believe quality is always more important, and after finishing The Wise Man’s Fear, I can confidently say that the decision to delay the book’s release was the correct one.

At the end of the day, despite all of its praise and recognition, The Name of the Wind was far from perfect. The book, after all, was still a debut effort. Still rough around the edges with uneven pacing, one-dimensional supporting characters, and shallow world-building some of the novel’s more notable flaws. So when the two books are compared against each other, it’s easy to see how much Patrick Rothfuss has grown as a writer and how much better The Wise Man’s Fear is than The Name of the Wind. The writing, for instance, is much more polished. The prose is more refined, the pacing is tighter with fewer lulls, and the overall flow of the narrative is smoother, which is especially impressive considering how much bigger the novel is than its predecessor.

Supporting characters remain largely one-dimensional, but this time around Patrick Rothfuss does a better job of injecting his characters, both old and new — Denna, Wilem, Sim, Auri, Master Elodin, Puppet, Maer Alveron, Bredon, Tempi, Felurian, Vashet — with color and personality. This is aided by much improved dialogue, which helps to mask the characters’ lack of depth with entertaining conversation. In fact, dialogue is one of the novel’s greatest strengths, with Kvothe and Denna’s playful banter and Kvothe’s interactions with Auri, Puppet and the Adem some of my favorite moments in The Wise Man’s Fear. On the flipside, the lack of villains in the book, or more specifically a tangible antagonist, is a bit disappointing.

As far as the shallow world-building, little has changed. The Chandrian and the Amyr for example, remain a mystery, although there is a reasonable explanation for that lack of information. The same can’t be said for why the rest of ‘The Four Corners of Civilization’ is largely ignored, but at least Patrick Rothfuss branches out in The Wise Man’s Fear to give readers a taste of the world’s different cultures and races including the Fae; the Kingdom of Vintas with their superstitions, prejudices, and courtly customs and politics; and the Adem with their unique method of communication which includes hand signals, their way of life which follows the Lethani, and their Ketan fighting style. If you also factor in the author’s well-developed magic system — sympathy, sygaldry, naming — with all of its various rules and restrictions, then one can see how Patrick Rothfuss at least possesses the capacity for more detailed world-building.

Perhaps the greatest improvement made between The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear is the story. Looking back, not a lot really happens in The Name of the Wind, at least nothing major, while the novel’s climactic moments involving a herbivorous dragon, Kvothe’s rival student Ambrose and a possessed mercenary left a lot to be desired, especially considering the lengthy page count and the hype that came with the book. To be fair, the story in The Wise Man’s Fear suffers from some of the same issues as its predecessor does, like major plotlines failing to progress and the author spending an extravagant amount of time on Kvothe’s day-to-day minutiae — his studies at the University, his money problems, Ambrose, courting Denna, his love life, et cetera — but as a whole, The Wise Man’s Fear is much more rewarding than The Name of the Wind. Part of it is being able to experience the more dramatic events responsible for shaping the various legends tied to Kvothe. Then there’s the ending, which Patrick Rothfuss handles beautifully, slowly winding down the story to a satisfying stopping point, while tantalizing clues and unfinished business serve as reminders that there is third and final volume in The Kingkiller Chronicle.

Now if there is one part of The Name of the Wind that needed little fixing, it was Kvothe’s first-person narrative. Charming, heartfelt, and highly accessible, Kvothe’s narrative was a major strength of the first novel, even if the protagonist came off arrogant at times and accomplished things no one his age should be able to accomplish. In The Wise Man’s Fear, Kvothe is still arrogant at times and still accomplishes things that defy his age, but at the same time, the book does a better job of showing off Kovthe’s fallible side including his vanity and his dark temper and his powerful thirst for knowledge. What I personally love about the narrative is the wide range of topics Kvothe covers in intimate detail over the course of his story. In The Wise Man’s Fear, these topics include Kvothe’s music, performing sympathy and sygaldry, working in the Fishery, navigating the Archives, learning how to scout, learning the Ademic language, studying the Ketan, courting Denna and sharing stories like the one about the boy with the gold screw in his belly button, the Faeriniel crossroads, the tale about Aethe and the beginning of the Adem, Felurian, and my personal favorite, the boy who loved the moon. Throughout all of this, Kvothe’s narrative is complemented with witty humor, interesting observations, and thoughtful insights:

• We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
• Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become.
• It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.

While Kvothe’s narrative may have been a strength in The Name of the Wind, the same can’t be said for the framing parts — the Prologue, Epilogue and various Interludes — which in comparison were a bit dull and brought little to the table. Not much has changed for them in The Wise Man’s Fear. The framing parts are still somewhat tedious, while providing few answers about why Kvothe became an innkeeper, his relationship with Bast, and the current state of their world. That said, the mystery regarding Kvothe’s chest is intriguing, while the framing parts do work well as a contrast to how far Kvothe has fallen from the hero he once was and how much stories can differ from the truth.

CONCLUSION: The release of The Wise Man’s Fear may have taken longer than expected, but it was definitely worth the wait. Compared to The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear is everything that made the first novel such a huge success except that it is bigger, better and more rewarding. Granted, many of the same flaws that ailed The Name of the Wind can still be found in The Wise Man’s Fear, but considering the vast improvements made to the sequel, these issues are only minor annoyances. To put it simply, anyone who enjoyed The Name of the Wind will be blown away by The Wise Man’s Fear. The book is that much better. Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that The Wise Man’s Fear will end up being one of the best fantasy novels of the year. As far as the third and final volume in The Kingkiller Chronicle, Patrick Rothfuss can take as much time as he needs to finish the book. If The Wise Man’s Fear is any indication, it will be worth waiting for... —Robert Thompson

The Wise Man's Fear

I finally got to read Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear. Life and my TBR pile would not allow for me to tackle this book as quickly as I would have liked. Luckily, Brilliance Audio sent me the audiobook and I was able to squeeze it in on my commute to work. Like many fans of The Name of the Wind, I was anxious to see how the story of Kvothe would progress. I was also anxious to see if Mr. Rothfuss could “call down lightning” twice. To say the least, I was not disappointed.

Fanlit reviewers Robert and Stefan both echo the majority of my thoughts on The Wise Man’s Fear. They’ve done an excellent job in analyzing the novel, so I will not take my review to that level. Instead I’ll keep it simple and give a few of my likes and dislikes about the novel.

The story ambles and sidesteps its way through the telling of Kvothe’s thoughts and adventures, and it’s wonderful. The book packs in 1000 pages and it still felt too short. What I liked most about the story is what everyone likes: Kvothe. He’s such an amazing character and its impossible not to find him engaging. In The Name of the Wind the side characters were a little flat. I felt Mr. Rothfuss made big strides in preventing that from happening in The Wise Man’s Fear. The cast of characters seemed a little more colorful and a bit more detailed than in the first book. The races of this world get some much-needed page time too. Personally, the people of Ademre were my favorite. I could easily see spin-off stories just based on the Adem.

The things I didn’t like were few, but the thing I disliked the most is actually hard to explain. I had to research and call upon my fellow reviewers to help find the right term to describe it. It’s a type of plot device, and I learned that the closest I could get to a term is Diabolus ex vacuus or maybe Diabolus ex machina. It is a fairly common trope; I just didn’t expect to see it so often. There are a couple of these devices in the story, and even the Chandrian themselves fall into this category. I do not want to reveal more than that, due to spoilers. Rothfuss’ writing is often superior to some of the story elements he uses, perhaps because the basic story was written a long time ago. Not really a huge deal overall, I just found it a bit awkward at times.

I listened to The Wise Man’s Fear on Brilliance Audio CD. It clocks in at a massive 43 hours stretched over 36 discs. It is huge. The story is narrated by Nick Podehl, and he does a wonderful job. He can be a bit dry at times, but overall his tone is perfect for the somewhat aloof Kvothe. If you usually hesitate to purchase audiobooks due to the price, I strongly suggest you pick this up because 43 hours of an amazing story is well worth the $30 you’ll spend on it. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t catch it….43…FORTY THREE…hours…long. That’s over an entire work week or two entire days of fantasy storytelling.
—Justin Blazier

The Wise Man's Fear

Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle is the story behind a legend — the real truth about the famous young man who has come to be known, for various reasons, as Kvothe the Arcane, Kvothe the Bloodless, the Kingkiller, etc. There are many names for, and stories about, Kvothe, but nobody knows which ones are true and which are merely based on some small kernel of truth. The Chronicler, though, is getting the scoop. He’s sitting down with Kvothe, now a humble innkeeper (how did that happen?!), over three days to learn the true story and to write it down. The Name of the Wind was Day One — when we learned about Kvothe’s early childhood and his goal to be admitted to the university so he could find out about the Chandrian — the strange beings who killed Kvothe’s parents and who nobody else seems to believe in.

The Wise Man’s Fear is Day Two. For the first part of the book, Kvothe is still at the university. His problems with poverty, teachers, girls, and his enemy Ambrose continue. Though it’s a lot of the same stuff we’ve seen before, and it is a bit tiring to constantly hear about how arrogant and clever Kvothe is, I actually enjoyed this part of the book the most. Kvothe’s antics are funny, I’m a sucker for a university setting, I enjoyed the explanations of sympathy and artificing, and I just can’t help but adore Kvothe for loving the library stacks so much that he has to crawl through dirty hidden subterranean tunnels to sneak in.

Yet when Kvothe leaves the university for a possible patronage, I was ready for some new scenery because his life had become a bit stagnant (the familiar cycle of admissions, trying to earn money, trying to find Denna, avoiding Ambrose’s pranks, etc). At first the change was welcome, but when Kvothe is sent off to lead a group of mercenaries to flush bandits out of the forest, the story became downright dull except for the climactic scene with the bandits. After that there’s an insufferably long episode with Tempi and the Adem which crawled on for hours in my audio version. I had to increase the playback speed so I could get through it — I was having a hard time believing in their culture (and Kvothe’s reaction to it) and, besides, I was seriously worried that Chronicler’s hand was going to seize up, or that he’d fallen asleep while Kvothe rambled on. (By the way, I recognize, from reading other reviews, that my opinion is the minority one.)

The audio version, produced by Brilliance Audio, was read by Nick Podehl — an excellent choice for The Wise Man’s Fear. His voice for Kvothe is perfect and he does a great job with the other characters, too. The book is 43 hours long and it’s a great way to read this story, though you may find that you need to occasionally increase playback speed which you can do with Windows Media Player or an iPod.

I’ve struggled with how to rate The Wise Man’s Fear. I love Kvothe, and it’s a lot of fun to watch him use his intelligence and his trouper skills to build his own legendary reputation. The problem isn’t the story — the problem is that the story doesn’t need to be this long. There’s a better shorter book inside The Wise Man’s Fear. —Kat Hooper

The Wise Man's Fear

As indicated by the subtitle “The Kingkiller Chronicles: Day Two”, The Wise Man’s Fear picks up where The Name of the Wind left off, continuing into the second day of the telling of Kvothe’s tale. The Name of the Wind was what I consider a perfect epic fantasy, combining the timeless quality of a fairy tale with the believability of a legend gone to myth. Patrick Rothfuss’ writing is dramatic without being overly so, his prose is beautiful, and his language feels archaic while still remaining easily understood. There is no denying he’s a natural-born storyteller.

That said. I wish I’d taken Kat’s review (above) more to heart because I had the same problems with The Wise Man’s Fear as she did, but I may have had a harder time getting past them. Considering how long it took for this book to be finished, I expected better.

To start with, I had every intention of re-reading The Name of the Wind beforehand, but ended up just jumping into The Wise Man’s Fear when the mood struck. I spent the first several chapters regretting that decision. It had been so long since I read the first book that it was hard to rekindle the enthusiasm and I’d forgotten enough to be a little lost. The story’s progress has slowed to a snail-like pace. If a third of this book was removed, it would’ve been better for it. Countless pages are spent on mundane and repetitious threads, while more exciting events are summarized in just a few sentences. When I finally got to the end, I was relieved that I hadn’t spent any more time with this tale. (It took me more days to finish this book than anything I’ve ever read before.)

Rothfuss still proves to be very good at making key elements relatable to his audience. Much of Kvothe’s story continues to center on the University. His academic endeavors, as well as his social experiences, resemble real college life. Kvothe is a very talented musician, and his music is another relatable aspect of the novel. If you’re an artist, or even if you’re just a no-talent aficionado like me, you can relate to the way Kvothe’s music is a big part of who he is. As for this reader, I enjoy spending time in a nice, cozy bar, so naturally I enjoyed the Waystone Inn interludes the best.

However, I had difficulty accepting that Kvothe could be only sixteen or seventeen years old during these adventures. Admittedly, I’m a hard sell when it comes to child characters. Some authors have made me believe that a kid can fit an adult’s worth of life experience into so few years — Mark Lawrence with The Prince of Thorns, for example — but only a very few, and this time, Rothfuss didn’t quite pull it off.

It’s because Rothfuss set the bar so high with The Name of the Wind that a three-star rating seems bad by comparison. To give credit where it’s due, there are some moments of exceptionally gifted writing in The Wise Man’s Fear. Nonetheless, when I look back at my reading experience, what I recall most is boredom. —Greg Hersom