Review: Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

[wshaffer]

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I wasn't even really sure whether I should review this book, because I figure everyone has either already read it or made up their mind whether they're going to read it. But, here we go.

First off, there's no getting around the fact that the pacing is extremely leisurely. At times, this can be pleasant in a "relax and let the author spin you a yarn" kind of way; at other times, you are just waiting for something to happen. It does pick up a bit in the last third of the book.

Otherwise, this is a book whose virtues are very much bound up with its flaws, and whether you like it or not probably depends on how much particular flaws grate on you. For example, the world building is not terribly original, but by the standards of other books in the big fat fantasy genre, it at least feels reasonably solid and convincing. And Kvothe is just the sort of omnicompetent precocious protagonist with a prodigious ability to get himself both into and out of trouble that is going to strike some readers as a perfect wish-fulfillment character, and some readers as an egregious Gary Stu.

In the end, I found it reasonably entertaining, although I'm a bit frightened of the sequel, because statistically, multi-volume big fat fantasy series do not get more briskly paced as the series moves on.



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