Recently finished The Wise Man's Fear and The Way of Kings.
The Way of Kings started slowly, and was at times a bit scattershot. That being said, by by the last third of the book I was completely engrossed. The Stormlight Archive has the possibility of being truly and thoroughly epic.
The Wise Man's Fear was excellent, but a bit strange. It dwells in places it shouldn't and breezes through where I would have appreciated more writing. I'm coming to loathe Denna and lose some empathy for Kvothe because of his absolute fucking retardedry when it comes to her, and it impacts my overall feel for the book. That being said, it was still fantastic, but not quite on the level of The Name of the Wind. I eagerly await the third book.
Edit: Haven't read The Painted Man, but did read The Desert Spear, which is a bit weird as I'm usually a stickler for reading series in order. I quite enjoyed The Desert Spear until it got to those characters involved in The Painted Man. Lol, don't know what that says about TPM, but there you have it.
This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 19 March 2011 - 10:49 PM
Trouble arrives when the opponents to such a system institute its extreme opposite, where individualism becomes godlike and sacrosanct, and no greater service to any other ideal (including community) is possible. In such a system rapacious greed thrives behind the guise of freedom, and the worst aspects of human nature come to the fore....