Hi everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I am going to review The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Though minimal, this review does have spoilers.
When The Name of the Wind was published in 2008, I remember picking it up from the fantasy shelf at my local bookstore, reading the synopsis and saying to myself, “I’ll buy it later.” I didn’t buy it until 2019 though, and part of me regrets that. Why? Because in 2008 the book was relatively unknown, and it didn’t have all the hype it does today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing the book’s success. I’m just saying that maybe if I had, I might have liked it and enjoyed it more.
But the Name of the Wind was not a book for me. Here’s why:
The protagonist. I did not like Kvothe. From the very beginning, he just got on my nerves. I mean, can this man do nothing wrong? He’s insufferably perfect, which makes him perfectly flawed, in my opinion. And not in the good way. No one is that good at everything. Every time I read about how good he was at something, like learning Chronicler’s shorthand writing system in a few hours, I rolled my eyes. This dehumanized him for me, and I could not connect with him at all. Maybe he’s that good at everything because he’s had to be. His life has not been easy, and he’s had some pretty big blows and lows, I get that. But I think I would have liked Kvothe a lot more if I’d actually gone through those terrible experiences in his life with him, not have him tell them through flashbacks. As it is, he’s just telling Chronicler (and the reader) what happened, and I felt completely detached from his story and from him.
The flashback structure and writing style of the book. Flashbacks are tricky. They’re defined as a pause that needs to happen for the narrator to recount something from before so the story in the now can move forward. In the now, we know that Kvothe is an innkeeper and that he has chosen to leave everything he once was behind. He has been an innkeeper for so long, however, that his old self has now become someone of legend, and no one around him today would ever associate that legend with the mild red-headed innkeeper he is now. But Kvothe’s past is catching up to him (or at least that’s what I interpreted from his fight with the spider-shaped demons in the woods). And then, Kvothe’s story in the present stops and he decides to tell Chronicler his life’s story.
My name is Kvothe. 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.
Honestly, when Kvothe starts recounting his life’s story (which isn’t more than 50 pages into the book), I was already bored. The main story and plot were moving along at a slower pace than walking, or more accurately, a standstill, and two, I did not like Rothfuss’ writing style. For some reason, I simply could not tolerate it. For example, he tends to say the same thing over and over in different paragraphs that are not that far from each other. Sometimes those paragraphs were on the same page and more than once I found myself saying, “You already said that”, and that annoyed me. Honestly, it surprised me that these repetitions and redundant paragraphs got past an editor. If all of them had been deleted, it would have made the book a lot shorter. And I definitely did not think they made the writing style any more lyrical because of it, which is one of the things that a lot of people that loves this book say. But I did not think it was lyrical at all. I just did not like it. And unfortunately, that affected my overall enjoyment of the book.
Now, I know that every part of Kvothe’s story in the flashbacks is important for the book’s world building, and for Kvothe’s search of the Chandrian. And honestly, I thought that those tidbit pieces of world building were one of the most interesting things in the book, and one of the few things I liked about it. The other is the magic system. Despite this, I felt that the author focuses too much in the past and lets the present, and the main story and plot, drag. A lot more time and effort were put in the story from before than the one in the now; maybe this does not happen in the second or it will be resolved in the third book, when the latter does come out eventually, but I don’t think I’m interested enough in Kvothe’s life story to find out.
I feel that when a writer uses flashbacks in his story he is asking the reader to bear with him and be patient. And that is fine, but sometimes it is more than the reader can take and he gets bored waiting for the actual story to continue. And that is what happened to me here. This isn’t the only book I’ve read where the main character is telling a chronicler his life’s story (I can think of two others from the top of my head right now) but this is the only one where I found the flashbacks to be frustratingly long and slow. The story and plot advance here, yes, but it is a tediously slow pace. And I guess that if you like the main character it shouldn’t be so bad to read about his life, but unfortunately that did not happen to me. And I’ve found that if you don’t like the protagonist, chances are pretty high that you won’t like the book either.
Now, things that I did like about this book are:
The Villain: The Chandrian. I think that if the book weren’t so centered on Kvothe and his life, I would have liked the book more. What little we did see of the villain in this book, though, I enjoyed thoroughly. And I would have liked to read more of them in the 600 or so pages of the book but that did not happen, and by the end of the book they were still a mystery to me. I did not mind that, but I do not think that I liked the book enough to read another 800 pages of Kvothe’s life to unravel that mystery. The simple fact of thinking about doing that bores me.
The Magic System: Now, saying the name of the wind…that was very interesting. And again, I wish the author had elaborated on it a bit more in this book for me to actually want to keep reading the series. But I don’t.
The Name of Wind, since its publication in 2008, has become a must-read book in the fantasy genre. And I am glad that I finally read it, but I am not going to continue the series. I give this book an overall rating of two stars, one for each thing in it that I liked. This rating is based on my personal experience reading this book, and I understand the importance of this book within the fantasy genre but it is not one that I will personally recommend. Neither, however, will I tell you not to read it. It is important for a reason but there are other books with the same trope that I enjoyed more.
I Did Not Like This At All.
