I have it, and now I am going to read it. Goodbye, and I am going to die of no sleep.

 

I just downloaded this li'l fella from Amazon. There's only really one thing I can say about it:

IT LIVES UP TO EXPECTATIONS.

And they are pretty much the highest I've ever had for a book. Reading it has put me in a better mood than the last time I got laid. I'm serious.

 

Goodbye cruel world.

Spoiler

Elodin is funny as hell. About a third of the way through and im very pleased. I honestly thought he would have been expelled already, but not complaining .

 

Just cracked open my copy, after an improbable struggle to get my hands on it. I started hunting for the ebook right at midnight, and actually found a couple, but they all required a billing address in the U.S. So I went into Chapters this morning, and they didn't have their copies yet. Neither did any other bookstore in my city. I checked. So I went to the next city over, and finally found a copy. No I couldn't have waited. Yes it was worth it. I'll probably resurface again in a day or two. (then again, maybe not, I may die of bliss in the near future)

 

I cannot fucking describe how amazing this book already is. I want to vomit cum.

 

Just got it. Gonna start reading it as soon as I post this, and not stop until I've read it twice.

See everyone tomorrow.

Page 150 Update:

Ahem.

HOLY SHIT, THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!

 

Not a single bookstore in my city has gotten the book in. Which is just fantastic, considering its freaking Phoenix. Needless to say, my day has been ruined. Dammit.

 

Ordered it from amazon since the only bookstore next to me had all (five) copies that they had reserved. Due to lack of funds and general bullshit, the earliest i can expect it is next monday. Goddammit. :facepalm

 

Got the only copy from the University book Store...can't wait to dig in.

 

Roughly 200 pages in, and loving it. Well worth the wait so far.

 

:facepalm Australia.

No online store sells it here, and with all of the bookstores in my area being owned by RedGroup which is now in recievership, there can be no ordering of books at all. FML, so much. My anger is only compounded by the book's awesomeness, and those frustrating spoiler tags.

Patience. *breathe in* Whooo. *breathe out*

The only thing making this wait bearable is the knowledge that the book is fucking awesome.

 

just got it! bye

 

Finished it about 5 hours ago. Now that I'm properly rested...spoilers below. Too much of it to be easily read in spoiler tags.

Big spoilers.











Overall, I do not think it quite as perfect as Name of the Wind. It is a very good book, very gripping and well written, but there were a few irritations.

Firstly, the whole sequence in the forest and then with Fulurian and then with the Adem was far too long. Especially the forest part. There was a lot of padding. Which is unusual for Rothfuss, as usually everything's so tight. It's also rather jarring given how little time is spent describing his shipwreck and following challenges - the existence of which seems to be odd. Within a couple of chapters it's as if it had never happened. He's well-dressed again and hasn't lost anything of significant worth.

The beginning bit at the university irritated me ever so slightly. It wasn't that it was long. I was looking forward to a long stretch at the university at the start of the story. No, the problem was that it was long but the first 150 pages were pretty much empty. Kvothe didn't seem to progress much at all - not until he made the gram.

The less said of Denna the better. In the Name of the Wind I thought she was okay but I liked Fela better. I'm now beginning to dislike her with not insignificant force. I'm sure that our irritation with her is supposed to be tempered by pity for her terrible life leading to her damaged emotional state and inability to trust, but any pity I had has long run out. She's just irritating. At best she's a bitch. At worst she's deliberately playing Kvothe. The biggest problem is that the tone of the narration paints Kvothe as the one who keeps messing up in some way. This may be just Kvothe's feelings for her, but there is something of a feeling that Rothfuss has a bit of a feminist agenda in a few parts of the book (and we know that he used to be heavily involved with the feminist group at his university).

I have mixed feelings about Naming and the fae. They seem too magical. what I really enjoyed about the first book is the way in which there wasn't really anything as magic. The draccus was just another animal, albeit an impressive one. Magic was just Sympathy, which was like a twisted physics. Names and the fae seem to completely trample over this. It's fairly clear that they're completely magical, no physical explanation available. It doesn't feel right, really. I had liked it better when magical things all turned out to be mundane in the details, if not the effects.

On the subject of Sympathy, I'm not entirely happy with the explanation of leakage, a problem with sympathy which occurred to me on my re-read. It seems to me that this explanation of leakage means that the heat lost in a sympathetic link is really rather readily available and useful. It can counteract binder's chills or be used itself as a source of heat. Also on the subject of Sypathy, Kvothe's inability to use it sometimes seems odd. He always looks for fire. But he knows about kinetic energy. Why not use, say, the kinetic energy of an arrow coming towards him as the source for a link?



Some things I particularly enjoyed:

Penthe (spelling?) and their discussion about fatherhood. I'm still not sure how we're meant to take this. But I choose to take it as there to show that despite some of the Adem's wisdom, they can still be majorly wrong about stuff.

Kvothe having money.

Kvothe making the gram.

Kvothe getting a grip on naming.

All of the story in Severen. I think Rothfuss is much better at writing city life than rural life. His rural writing tends to drift a bit too close to the tropes he intends to subvert.

The pacing of the information about the Chandrian. Their names. Denna's investigation in to Lanre. That said, they way they talk about the Chandrian in the Waystone, we know they're still around and that Kvothe was unsuccessful.

Cinder being with the bandits was interesting. What was this major league bad guy doing with some bandits? It seems to further cement my view of the Chandrian as not as suoernatural as the stories imply, with the exception of Haliax. Cinder was living in a tent, not some kind of supernatural shadow world. He didn't bring any significant supernatural powers to bear on Kvothe. He was engaged in banditry.

That leads to the question of what Haliax's purpose is. How does banditry have to do with it? The best I can think of is that he was trying to create civil instability and unrest by interfereing with the flow of taxes. It's almost certain that the Chandrian know of Kvothe by now, given both this direct encounter and all the stories.

One thing I liked is that we got a much clearer view of this world's level of scientific knowledge. Kvothe's inability to give an empirical argument - or even to suggest that the matter is not appropriate for logical deduction - when discussing whether or not babies have fathers seems to hint at no firm idea of the scientific method of investigation, despite their fairly wide knowledge of some of the sciences. It also seems that they haven't yet reached Newtonian mechanics, as they couldn't calculate, even roughly, the projectile motion of Elodin's rock.

My impressions of the world remain much the same. The world in its little details is very realistic and detailed and original. The draccus, sympathy, the mythologies and religions and musical folklore, the scientific knowledge. But on the lage scale - the political and economic scale - the world seems very much a mail-order fantasy world. That said, I really enjoyed how in this book you could really feel the depth of the world. Not so much the vastness - Kvothe travelled from corner to corner in not much time - but the density of it. You really feel like all the people living in this world are real and all have their own lives. There's a real feeling that if you were to just turn the corner you'd run in to a different tale with another hero and a different quest.















Big spoilers.



So that's my rather rambling thoughts on the book. Overall think I give it 8.5/10. (The Name of the Wind was an easy 10). But I might like it better upon second reading. That happened with Name of the Wind.

 

I like that Kvothe finally

Spoiler

got laid. And the fact that Denna somehow felt she had the right to criticize him on seeing so many women around the University when literally the entire fucking story has been her gold-digging rich dudes, dumping them and sneaking off later to de-guilt with Kvothe. Sometimes she didn't even wait until she dumped them. She's not just a hypocrite, she's a cheating hypocrite.

She gives entire new dimensions to the word tease. She outright said in WMF in her little prostitute pep-talk it was basically whoring without sex.

I try to care about her tragic circumstances and whatever, but no. She's shown she has the cojones to hold a man at knifepoint, but not apparently enough to leave a man that's beating her and dragging her around the world? Yeah, no dice. Try again when Kvothe hasn't literally offered to set you up as de facto royalty.

I'm seriously hoping the woman Kvothe is talking about actually turns out to be Devi or something. Anyone but Denna. Fuck that bitch.

I don't like Denna either. Also,

Spoiler

Does anyone find it weird that literally every skill Kvothe tries in present time seems to fail? I could understand magic not working because of his Alar failing due to grief or something, but his Adem training, muscle-memory with two soldier punks?

I'm going to rage so hard if it turns out in the third book that Kvothe was just a bullshitting Ruh and this is his masterwork story. Or something like that.

7/10. I'm left with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction I can't really explain.

 

Spoiler

Does anyone find it weird that literally every skill Kvothe tries in present time seems to fail? I could understand magic not working because of his Alar failing due to grief or something, but his Adem training, muscle-memory with two soldier punks?

I'm going to rage so hard if it turns out in the third book that Kvothe was just a bullshitting Ruh and this is his masterwork story. Or something like that.

Rothfuss has said in interview that there's to be a sequel trilogy, which follows on from the framing story. This trilogy is mainly about Kvothe's past. So I doubt we'll see any major progression in the framing story. The most I hope for is Kvothe getting his skills back. But I doubt the plot will move on.

Anyway, it goes back to was Bast said in book 1. It's not that he's forgotten the skills. He clearly still remembers everything. It's not that he isn't as smart. He broke Chronicler's cipher. It's not his focus is gone from grief. It's that his personal identity is screwed. The good news is that he appears to be regaining it.

Spoiler

E.g. at the very end of the story, him creeping out at night to practice his Ketan, and it said that it was a graceful step. So it's coming back. The most predictable (yet satisfying) route would be an action scene at the end where at the last moment he remembers who he is and it all comes back at once.

 

Taure: Sauce on Rothfuss saying there'll be another trilogy?

 

Spoiler

Doesn't the second last chapter explain his fight with the soldiers? I was under the impression it was at least implied that he lost the fight on purpose after he somehow mused their true intentions and the plot behind their appearance.

Anyways, I agree with the general conclusions so far, thoughI'm hesitant to rank it just yet given the possible influence of nostalgia and my huge expectations and excitement concerning Wise Man's Fear. Still, despite it being a good book I felt something was missing, something that made The Name of the Wind so great.

​

 

Can't recall if he said another trilogy or simply more books, however:

http://castroller.com/Podcasts/Swor...ew with Patrick Rothfuss - The S L Podcast 54

I think that was the one.

Edit: Apparently not. It might be in this series of 3 videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRpBpSW6eKU

There will be more books:

http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/content/interviews.asp

Those books include a trilogy:

(Lol@ 1 per year).

http://www.sffworld.com/interview/224p0.html

The stories will be connected:

http://www.phantastik-couch.de/interview-with-patrick-rothfuss.html

 

Just finished at two in the morning. Amazing. Despite its obvious similarities to NotW, it feels like a different sort of tale. It may be superior to the first, I'll have to sleep on it. But a definite 10/10.

 

I am about two thirds of the way through it, I am not read any of the spoiler posts at all, but I just want to comment on how incredible this book is.

Nothing beats this series for me anymore. Not Dresden, not Codex Alera, not anything. It is just mind blowingly good, and I am more than happy to wait another three years for the last book if it is of the same quality.

Though I'd rather not of course. More will be to come when I actually finish it.