[kcf]

While I finished it over a month ago, my review only just went live. In short, I really liked it - though if you didn't like The Name of the Wind, I don't think you'll like The Wise Man's Fear either. But if you did like The Name of the Wind, I think you'll like this one even more.

An excerpt from my review:

Quote

In this series, Rothfuss sets out deconstruct the standard epic fantasy hero. To do this he must embrace a number of the classic tropes involved – Kvothe is orphaned, driven to avenge his parents’ death, attractive, arrogant, gifted (at music and in some academic pursuits), an adolescent coming of age, a legendary fighter, a talented wizard, etc. The joy for me is in watching Rothfuss slowly dissect this ideal fantasy hero – a classic Gary Stu if you will. Rothfuss chooses to do so by having an older and (possibly) wiser hero relay his story to a chronicler and the reader sees this all through the first person perspective of Kvothe telling his coming of age story. Kvothe chooses what to share and how to share it while periodic interludes provide hints of the popular versions of these events as told by people at large and offer other fun and interesting perspectives. Kvothe often leaves out what would otherwise seem rather important – like the time he is on a ship attacked and sunk by pirates which he barely survives after which he spends time as a penniless beggar is glossed over in only a couple of lines, yet he spends pages mooning over the girl of his dreams. Apparently one of the more infamous events in Kvothe’s popular lore is a trial that he eventually wins – yet he barely mentions it in his retelling, much to the chronicler’s chagrin. The reader is left wondering which is more at work – the exaggeration of rumor or Kvothe’s own version of things?

The truth is that all of this would be a complete failure if not for Rothfuss’ incredible story-telling ability. The style that he writes with is intoxicating and addictive – there is energy to his story-telling that cannot be denied. Calling the book a page-turner doesn’t quite do it – this is a 1000+ page book that reads like a book less than half its size. In a time when I have very limited time for reading, I still managed to finish it in less than a week. The way Rothfuss writes makes me think he’s one of those people that you could spend all night listening to as they tell one ridiculous story after another. At the time of your listening you are having the time of your life, later in retrospect you kind of wonder what the big deal was.
Full Review

[Werthead]

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

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Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, Kvothe the Kingkiller. He is a legend but the real man is an enigma. A man named Chronicler is trying to find out the truth behind the legend by convincing Kvothe to tell him his life story, a task so long it will take three days to complete.

On the second day, Kvothe relates more of his time at the Commonwealth University, his ongoing feud with another student named Ambrose and his increasingly proficient studies in various areas. He also tells of his time spent in Vintas, serving a nobleman seeking to woo a lady, and learning the arts of combat in far Ademre. But how much of Kvothe's story is truth and how much is his own fabrication?

The Wise Man's Fear is the sequel to The Name of the Wind and the second in The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy. Since the trilogy was originally one extremely long novel split into three parts, The Wise Man's Fear has little preamble and not much of the climax. It starts, we follow the story for a time, and then it ends with little resolved. For a novel that is 1,000 pages long in hardcover, that should be a fairly damning comment.

Rothfuss's saving grace is his immense writing skill. He could make the telephone directory sound warm and interesting, and whilst the book is extremely long most of the chapters are short and snappy. The narrative is divided into two distinct sections, basically Kvothe in the University and Kvothe out in the world, and these sections are themselves fairly episodic. Whilst Kvothe's hunt for information about the Chandrian, the mysterious creatures that killed his family, provides a narrative spine of sorts, sometimes dozens of chapters pass without this plot element being as much as mentioned.

As a result The Wise Man's Fear feels less like a novel and more like a collection of tightly linked short stories (a feeling added to by the fact that one episode in the novel, The Road to Levinshir, was previously published as a separate short story almost a decade ago). This dichotomy - a very episodic book presented as a single novel - creates problems for pacing and consistency, with some of the episodes and stories being fascinating and others being tedious, whilst several more interesting-sounding incidents (like Kvothe standing trial for a misdemeanour) are skipped over in a couple of paragraphs. The Name of the Wind suffered from this as well, such as the incongruous and dull draccus incident towards the end of the book, but due to its much greater length The Wise Man's Fear is even more prone to it. Kvothe's dalliance with a famous Fae temptress goes on for far too long and winds up feeling a bit like the porn version of Tom Bombadil, whilst Kvothe's training montage with the Klingon Aiel Dothraki Vikings of the far north-east is just plain dull. Those who found Kvothe insufferable and Gary Stu-esque in the first novel will likely plain hate him here, as he picks up a ton more skills (including unarmed and armed combat, more magical skills and several more languages) with ease.

But Rothfuss does seem to be more overtly pulling the wool over the reader's eyes here. Kvothe reports on his badass fighting skills but then in a 'present' incident is unable to effectively defend himself from attack. Is this because he overrated his combat abilities, or because he's rusty, or because he deliberately holds back? The reader is invited to decide. Anomalies in Kvothe's story are also pointed out by Chronicler, and Kvothe admits to occasionally sprucing up his story. He's not exactly an unreliable narrator on the scale of Severian in The Book of the New Sun, but Rothfuss is at least letting the reader know that Kvothe himself might not be the best person to tell his tale, but he's all we've got to go on.

Elsewhere, plot elements are carefully alluded to rather than being spelt out, such as the motivations and identity of Denna's mysterious employer, or the relationship between Kvothe and a minor character that Kvothe himself is totally oblivious to. There is an impressive degree of subtlety running through this brick-thick tome that will no doubt raise questions and discussions that will keep fantasy forums busy until the final volume is released.

Rothfuss's powers of prose and characterisation remain highly impressive. The writing is rich and atmospheric, setting the scene perfectly, and Rothfuss has a keen eye for detail, humour and warmth (though in this book slightly more undercut by bitterness and cynicism), but those hoping for the story to explode into life, become bigger and more epic, will be disappointed. In a way Rothfuss is writing an anti-epic fantasy, with the focus narrowly on one character and the ordinary events that have been inflated out of all proportion. This forces the reader to keep downplaying expectations, since Rothfuss isn't playing the same game as a lot of other epic fantasy authors.

The Wise Man's Fear (****) is a difficult book to review, as it's well-written, sometimes compulsively page-turning and features some extremely well-played and subtle storytelling. On other, briefer, occasions it's tediously dull, cloying and prone to attacks of purple prose (particularly in the frisky fairy section). The book is also monstrously overlong and could have been split into two or three more focused, shorter books without too much of a problem. But Rothfuss is too good a writer to let the book's many issues sink it, and the book ends with the reader left wanting to know what happens next, which is the key thing. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

[QuickTidal]

Werthead, on 18 March 2011 - 03:42 PM, said:

Kvothe's dalliance with a famous Fae temptress goes on for far too long and winds up feeling a bit like the porn version of Tom Bombadil

I am at this part right now and finding it boring as all hell. It would have been interesting for a few chapters, but so far it's been going on for like 100 pages or something. Rothfuss' writing gets me through it and up till now everything has been good....I am just finding this long and overblown section annoying.

[Salt-Man Z]

QuickTidal, on 30 March 2011 - 03:11 PM, said:

It would have been interesting for a few chapters, but so far it's been going on for like 100 pages or something.

Oddly enough, I found that once Kvothe leaves the University, every new section runs about 100 pages (at least in my SFBC edition.)

[QuickTidal]

Salt-Man Z, on 30 March 2011 - 04:35 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 30 March 2011 - 03:11 PM, said:

It would have been interesting for a few chapters, but so far it's been going on for like 100 pages or something.

Oddly enough, I found that once Kvothe leaves the University, every new section runs about 100 pages (at least in my SFBC edition.)

Yeah, it's like big setpieces of 100 pages each assembled into the latter half of the book. Not that's it's bad...this faerie thing is the only part that has really dragged for me so far.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 30 March 2011 - 05:50 PM

[QuickTidal]

Here's my review:

http://icebergink.bl...by-patrick.html

[Tarcanus]

I was actually surprised at how many people dislike the Felurian section of the novel. Was I the only one that noticed that very large sections of the Fae piece seemed to be written in some sort of meter or verse? I found it particularly easy to read because the flow of the words just carried me along and I found that even characters' dialogue was rhyming and flowing with the rest of the narrative.

Yet I haven't seen a review yet that talks about that (granted, I haven't read QT or kcf's reviews because I'm at work and they're blocked).

Great review, though.

[amphibian]

Tarcanus, on 04 April 2011 - 07:26 PM, said:

I was actually surprised at how many people dislike the Felurian section of the novel. Was I the only one that noticed that very large sections of the Fae piece seemed to be written in some sort of meter or verse? I found it particularly easy to read because the flow of the words just carried me along and I found that even characters' dialogue was rhyming and flowing with the rest of the narrative.

Yet I haven't seen a review yet that talks about that (granted, I haven't read QT or kcf's reviews because I'm at work and they're blocked).

Great review, though.

The Tor review/spoileriffic discussion mentions the meter/rhyme thing. I never quite got the hang of iambic or meter in reading or speaking, but I did notice a certain flow to it that was different.

No idea why people pick on the Felurian section. The Adem section was not as well written to me and I'd focus on that as the weak point of tWMF.

[MTS]

It's not that I didn't enjoy it, I just felt it dragged a little at the end. Same with the Adem part, although its drag-factor was comparably much more bearable.