There is plenty wrong with a Gary Stu character. I really don't need more wish-fulfillment shtick - got enough of that in my teenage years.

While the Rothfuss is quite subversive and clever in book one, little to nothing of that remains here. To be fair, I din't care most of the problems at first read: expectation kept deferring judgement. I rolled my eyes and slogged through parts (the love scenes, the long-drawn out mercenary episode, etc), but the second read kind of illuminated how irritatingly hollow this book was. How can you be interested in a character that can pretty much do everything?

 

It's never been a secret that Kvothe is somewhat of a prodigy. He can do a lot, and often better than most. A Gary Stu character is often loved by all, more than not. Yet Kvothe has more enemies than friends, really.

It's also not a secret that he falls - and falls hard - ends up as a broken bartender.

There's more to his character than his abilities. A lot more.

 

True, and it's not like he hasn't fucked up a few times already. Getting banned from the Archives, getting his blood stolen (never mind the feud with Ambrose in the first place), pissing off Hemme. Those are all pretty big things that he's fucked up on in spite (and in one case because) of his sympathy prowess.

Seems to me that Kvothe doesn't really make small mistakes, he goes straight for the massive, plot twisting ones.

 

His abilities are prodigious, and that plays out perfectly in book one. In book two, however, there are a number of problems and most of them center around women and sex. Not only was that sex goddess part absolutely boring, content-wise it read like adolescent wish fulfillment. The quality of writing was really its only saving grace.

Sexual situations have not been captured well by Rothfuss. From obliviousness to puppy love (which really is what Kvothe and Denna read like), the protagonist graduates to a level where the women 'know' that he's acquired what? A shine in his eyes that bespeaks his experience? The barmaid scene following the sex goddess was ridiculous. Others have pointed out the problem of STD's with that whole free love culture - and that makes it (a wise old man trope in sexier guise) even more cringe worthy.

Also, his prodigious abilities didn't allow him to figure out that those women are interested in him? And he, a musician, is not trying to have sex during his gifted adolescence? Rothfuss' sexual politics leave a lot to be desired.

But then, that isn't the only problem with the book. Abilities are well and good, but experience counts too, and he is doing things with a super-surplus of one, but a deficit of the other. Stuff like teaching a nobleman to court a younger woman; commanding a serious stretched out expedition without prior experience (and yet devising awesome tactics and being barely scared); sex goddess; penetrating into a highly secretive culture and learning the very basis of their economy and culture in a couple of months (need I point out here that the best of fighters have their skills programmed right into their muscle memory - and that it takes years to do so?); etcetera. And there isn't a trace of irony here! Not a drop (unless that Inverarity is right and the narrator is seriously unreliable - which, while making the sequence of events easier to digest would render the book kind of a mess.)

And yet, the book was interesting enough that I read it a second time. Go figure.

 

In a closed society, such as the one the Ademe seems to be (where woman openly say they won't sleep with barbarians) isn't the chance of an STD null? No outside contamination.

Even in the last fight before he leaves the Ademe, it's mentioned that Kvothe is fairly certain that the twelve year-old girl let him win their final fight. Kvothe had a far way to go before he could even compare to their skills.

 

This. And I hated the music parts of the novel. That's right, I'm basically the guy who hates lightsabers in Star Wars. And I still loved it. Rothfuss can make even shit seem appetizing.

 

You're assuming that somebody outside of their society will be the transmitter, why? I don't know exactly how venereal diseases began (a quick google search didn't illume), although it might have been the mutation of some contracted bacterium or something similar. Either way, as long as we assume STDs exist in this world, no society is probably exempt from having them.

Even if we're assuming that within this society nobody has STDs, and that they don't have sex with outsiders, there still are ways of contracting it: we know that they interact with people outside of their clan, and all we need for STDs is 1) the blood of somebody with STDs that they killed 2) Well, hygiene is not exactly the first priority and is quite lacking. In long expeditions like the one in the book, exposure to other people's spit, blood, even shit increases due to shared instruments.

Finally, if a single person contracted it, and with this society being as insular and 'free sexed' as it is, there would probably be a quick epidemic.

He did the tree thing. He is a full warrior. Objective test, here.

Although, the means he used might have been different from those used by the Adame: their mumbo-jumbo vs his stop-grabbing-her-tits mumbo jumbo. This renders it a bit more plausible, although still not entirely so.

 

Kvothe is nothing compared to even a mediocre Adem. He learned enough to get by against your average swordsman maybe. But he is not Adem. He passed the sword tree test because he is a namer not because he is Adem. The twelve year old girl was described as playing in the sword tree dodging the leaves and said she was practicing. That is how the Adem past the test. Kvothe says he would be cut to ribbons if he tried that.

Kvothe writes songs and poetry for the Maer. Unless im forgetting something he didn't teach the Maer how to court her.


Finally if it bothers you that bad don't read it and let the people who like/love the books do so.

 

I just finished it, and I am left with a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. The Name of the Wind is much better than its sequel, mostly because of the pacing. Oddly enough, WMF felt more like a first novel than NoTW ever did.

What worked:

Sim, Wil, and Fela- They are excellent foils to Kvothe.

The whole arc with the Maer's poisoning- Very, very well handled.

Tempi- This guy is seriously awesome. He works because he's probably one of the few decent human beings Kvothe has actually run into. Aside from him, you've got Sim, Tempi, Fela, and the old monk.

Auri- Awesome as always. Auri is everything Luna Lovegood wishes she was.

Devi- Seriously bad ass, while still being very believable. I love the implications that she got kicked for being too good at what she does for a woman, and that Dal is both a sexist tool and a sympathetic ear for Kvothe. I also love the implications that Devi might just be lying about why she got kicked out. However, I am very interested in how she got started as a moneylender and where her starting nest egg came from.

The Malfesance Plot- This, while hilariously transparent, was well written enough for me to overlook Kvothe's idiocy. Devi being complicit in the Plum thing was excellent as well.

What doesn't work:

The Transitions- Oh. Dear. God. Rothfuss doesn't know how to smoothly transition from the end of one plotline to another. The major offender is the time skips, and the most egregious one by far is the Shipwreck when he's traveling to the Maer.

Elodin: No. Do not want. This is a Mary Sue gone wild. Give me Elxa Dal, he's a real boss. Elodin is basically Great Teacher Onizuka, but with magic. Seriously.

Felurian- Yeah, some scrawny jailbait sixteen year-old is totally going to impress someone who's been fucking everything that moves since the dawn of time? Bullshit. Actually, the whole arc in Faerie was a little lame, except for the tree, which was mildly interesting.

The Adem- This was a steaming pile of horseshit. Not only does their economy make no fucking sense, but they are basically a clan of arrogant, backward, inbred hicks that are too stupid explain the idea of a philosophy to Kvothe. They're a bunch of morons that apparently too undeveloped to understand animal husbandry, but they've got Ironworking. They may have sweet martial arts, but they are clearly too insipid to be allowed to exist. This entire section made me start yelling at the book. They look down on everybody, despite being technologically, socially, and culturally behind every other civilization we've been previously exposed to. The worst part? When Kvothe couldn't defend the fact that sex between a man and a woman, when no contraceptives are used, leads to pregnancy, and the primary reason is that his opposition was too idiotic to breathe. This entire arc was one massive failure after another, Kvothe included.

Things I am ambivalent toward:

Kvothe- I think he's getting stupider the more power he has. For most of the book, he's basically a mouth-breather, but he shows brief fits of intelligence throughout the story.

Denna- She's a very believable street rat; she's just not a very sympathetic one. I think it's fairly clear that Pat is setting everything up for Denna to be working for 'Bredon' or whatever he ends up being. I also think it's a 50-50 shot that Bredon is either an Amyr or a Chandrian, but my gut tells me that Bredon is an Amyr. It's becoming clear that the Amyr may very well be the real bad guys, and the Chandrian are just the lesser evil. Whatever side Kvothe ends up on, he will be forced to fight her- calling it now.

Ambrose- Hello Draco Malfoy, I'm pleased to see that you've found a career outside of the Harry Potter series. I'm just waiting for you to say "Wait until my father hears of this!" from your shit-stained lips.

As a whole: What Patrick has done in his two books amounts to being a Mary-Sue apologist. He's defending the idea of having these over-the-top idealized characters in his stories. He does a little deconstruction, but basically every character except for Sim and the Chronicler is a Mary Sue. Kvothe definitely is. Elodin has developed into a Sue. Devi is a sue, Denna, Auri, Bast, Master Herma, and so very many more. Arguably, Kvothe is the least Sue-ish of the lot, and in any other story he'd be too awesome to exist. Rothfuss has taken these absolutely ridiculous characters and said "Okay, they're supermen. What would they really be like?" What is really impressive is that he pulled it off.

Over all: 7/10. This book wasn't as impressive as its predecessor, but is still a very solid work in its own right.

 

I'm left really confused as to what exactly you define as a Mary Sue. Chancellor Herma with his two lines of dialog is a Sue? Auri? Denna? How are these characters Mary Sues?

Personally, I didn't mind the shipwreck or the skim over the trial. There was a lot to fit into the book, and it's a character telling the story, not third person.

I think the entire Fae sequence was meant to lay ground work, since it seems he'll be going back there in the future. That and to get him his cloak and the encounter with the Ctaeth. I think the Adem are getting the short stick from a lot of readers, which means Rothfuss did a poor job explaining. From my point of view when taking into account what the Adem said, the school where Kvothe visited was just a very small microcosm of Ademre. As Vashet said, there are many other schools and villages that practice different forms of the lethani. I imagine they aren't nearly as one dimensional as a whole as what we saw. That said, how exactly are they technologically and socially behind other cultures? Because they're different?

We already know that Kvothe fights an angel (one of the original Amyr) so your prediction is kind of pointless there. Speaking of which, I kind of wonder if it was Tehlu or one of the other original Amyr who dropped lightning on the tree. Cinder was listening to something while Marten was praying to Tehlu repeatedly. I should go back and see if he starts listening after Marten says Tehlu three times.

 

So... stories can't involve people or civilisations with incorrect beliefs?

Felurian is getting a lot of stick, but I actually thinks it makes sense. She's not a human woman who has been having sex for ages, she's a creature whose very nature is sexual. Everyone who is saying the scene is unrealistic with regards to Kvothe's abilities seem to be treating it as if it were an interaction with a human woman. It's not. It's inherently magical in nature. It's like they're living Kvothe's fantasy. They occupy a dreamlike world where the same rules do not apply.

Certainly no one is moaning that Kvothe was able to perform magic that he wouldn't normally be able to in that odd dream-state. Why then complain at his sexual prowess? The whole thing reeks of an entirely different type of virgin fanboyism - that is, an anti-bandwagon bandwagon against things which might make people think you're a virgin fanboy.

 

Sure they can. It's just that in this case it wasn't the beliefs, it was how they were handled from a writing standpoint. My problem with it has to do with how we were introduced to their concept of family. It was pretty much just dropped in, "Oh, by the way, Babies come from magic and sex totally doesn't lead to babies trololololol!" It should have been something developed a little more carefully, and I would have appreciated a bit more information on how their society functions as a whole.

Although, it would be hilarious if we return to Ademre to find two red-headed children running around.

I see what you did there.

Fair enough. However, looking at it again, I think my biggest frustration with that sequence is how Felurian spoke. It made me skim that section, and thus pretty much all of her dialogue as I am a bit obsessive about grammar. (Naturally, there will be a typo in that sentence, but I will find it after someone comments on it.)

Actually, you make a very good point. Kvothe did totally pull that magic out of his ass, and then Elodin was all "Wow Kvothe, You totally got this mythic creature in bed, a creature that isn't human, and understood it an indeterminate, but implicitly short time! The Slumbering Mind is awesome, isn't it?"

I'm adding that to my list of gripes. I guess I missed that because I was skimming that section.

@Sol: I've always worked with the rule of thumb that a Mary Sue is a character that is too idealized, where even the character's flaws are something that many people desire. This tends to lead to the author letting the character take over the story. For instance, an antihero trope from most young adult novels is to give them a temper. The thing is, a lot of kids that age think that having a hair trigger temper is cool. I know because my friends and I were those kids when we were fourteen. As a side note, I once dated a girl with heterochromia (one bue, one brown) who was very... familiar with alt/goth culture, got much better grades than I ever did, she was apparently popular-ish, and the whole thing lasted about two weeks. Basically, she figured out that I wasn't a mysterious loner, and in fact was just a very absent-minded nerd with an overblown sense of melodrama. The funny (and moderately relevant) thing was, her parents had the cajones to name her Mary-Sue.

Anyway, the reason I've enjoyed these books as much as I have is because Rothfuss takes the over-the-top epic characters I grew up on, and makes them come to life. He makes a whole world full of them, and thus no single character can take over, since they're all on par. Just for a thought experiment, imagine the character of Kvothe dropped into Harry's body. Let him face all of Harry's trials and tribulations. Now pull him out and repeat the process with Devi in Hermione's body, and then Ambrose in Draco Malfoy's body. You could use a different book, but the point remains: if any of the characters were put just about any other story they would take it with their sheer awesomeness.

 

Isn't that rather unfair? Rothfuss' characters are Mary-Sue's because they wouldn't fit well in someone else's story? Because they are better realized than another writer's? That doesn't make sense. They weren't written for Harry Potter's world, and doing such a comparison is pointless because it proves nothing.

Rothfuss writes characters with distinct feels to them. I don't identify Ambrose with Malfoy at all. Nor Devi with Hermione. Auri is not Luna. Etc, etc.

 

Truth. Each character has their own personality that is shaped by their backstory and, most importantly, hints at the backstory in question. After all, Auri is speculated to be Princess Ariel not just because of what she says but by the way she acts too; the tea party she and Kvothe had especially hints at it.

While some of the major aspects of some characters are a bit overblown, in a way, though it doesn't really detract from them in my eyes, they're still a long way from being Mary-Sue's.

Hell, the guy you seem to have most trouble with - Elodin - is pretty much the opposite of every Mary-Sue I've ever read about; not many people can stomach him for long periods (note the people who left his class and Hemme in particular), he annoys people (albeit in amusing ways), is vindictive, subversive and generally just weird. Pretty much the only reason Kvothe likes him is because he's an insanely talented Arcanist and knows more about Naming than anyone else he has access to (possibly even anyone else in the story, though that remains to be seen tested).

Of course it helps that he's incredibly amusing to us readers. Can't imagine Kvothe is too happy about jumping off a building or helping Elodin break into Hemme's room at Elodin's insistence.

 

Please. Just read this, and then take a hard look at the King Killer Chronicles.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonMarySueTraits

Seriously.

 

Man, I'm looking through there and am completely failing to spot any character that has even a few of those traits (some are in there, of course, but that's because they're human). Even Elodin, who has the most that I could pick up on from memory, has many other traits that bump him way down from Gary Stu status, and even then they're well explained and consistent with his character.

I'm going to have to agree with Sesc on this one, Mary/Gary-Stu labels seem to be bandied about less as a description and more of an excuse for why a person didn't like a character.

 

Okay, you want a list? Here. And just for the record, I actually like a lot of the characters in these book. I am acknowledging what they are

Kvothe: An Emo-sue. Character-wise, he's a bizarre fusion of Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. He's got the wet cat hissy fit/ambition/speak before thinking from Ron, and the cunning/drive/angst/back story from Harry. This is then turned up to 11 by making him a super-genius, super-lutist, "silver-tongued", and literally living from gig to gig. He's got a temper (the most classic 'flaw' of the antihero) and he's pretty much an asshole to everyone. And this is before the Wise Man's Fear mind you, where Kvothe has "the most mindblowingly divine sex ever" with just about every willing female except Denna, and gets an invisibility cloak.

Denna: 1. Is either Brave or Cheerful despite her past. Check.
2. A perfect singing voice. Check.
3. Picks up new skills quickly. Check.
4. "Where's Mary Sue?"
5. Love at first "sight" with Kvothe. Check
6. Previous established personalities change for her. Check.

This adds up to:Mildly deconstructed Relationship Sue.

Elodin:
1:If there is a personality, it's who the author wishes they could be, never who they are. While this is a regular feature in most original characters, Mary Sue takes it to the extreme.

 

Honestly couldn't care less. Either you like it or you don't.


Kvothe is a talented musician because he was raised a musician. He grew up playing the lute. I have a friend who was the same way with guitar. The son of a bitch can play any instrument there is with strings with a couple days of messing with it. There is a very simple reason why he is such a talented musician. The majority of his life was spent with his family who made a living as musicians/entertainers.

He is smart. Big fucking deal. Not everyone can be Harry Potter who gets along by being a lazy average student. Also if you will recall, Kvothe doesn't breeze into the University HE CHEATS. He knew the answers to 99% of the questions before he was interviewed. He breezes through early on because he had a one on one tutor who was more than willingly to teach him. He struggles more later on. He is far from flawless.


Asshole to everyone? Not really. Aside from Ambrose and Hemme, who both started the bullshit, I can't think of anyone he goes out of his way to annoy.

 

I don't think you can classify Denna as a Sue, simply because you see her through the eyes of Kvothe, who is blinded by his love for her. She is not unfailingly beautiful, as Bast pointed out in NotW, despite what Kvothe says.

That's utter bullshit. She fact that she's always brave/cheerful could actually be considered a character flaw because she's so obviously faking it, putting on a happy face so she can do what needs to be done. Would you rather she bemoan about her (unspecified) tragic past or the fact that she has to practically whore herself out just to try and create a life for herself? Her actions regarding her hardships are actually what make her real and appealing as a character (as appealing as a love interest can be)

Once again, you're seeing through the eyes of Kvothe, who's an unreliable narrator when it comes to Denna.

What? How is calling her a Mary Sue evidence? And being flighty is not a Mary Sue trait. It's the exact opposite, actually. It's frustrating and ridiculous and very, very realistic.

Since when is flirting while traveling "love at first sight"? If she ever did fall in love with him, it was after months and months of getting to know as their relationship slowly progressed. If this is a love story (and I'm not convinced it is, I half suspect that they'll never get together) then it's the exact opposite of love at first sight.

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. She's a consistent character.

I don't really like Denna all that much. Half the time, when her character shows up I have the urge to skim through the next couple pages of Kvothe being a love struck teenager. But that doesn't mean she's a Mary Sue. I imagine that I'd actually like her if we ever got to see through her point of view or if Kvothe wasn't so smitten with her.

A Mary Sue is an unrealistic character who is loved by all and has little or no flaws. It's the mark of a weak writer who can't create real people with their words. Sesc is right. You're just applying the labels of Mary/Gary Stu to characters you don't like, and providing weak, meaningless assertions as evidence. If you don't like the characters, just say so. But don't bash Rothfuss' character building.