[Review] The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Saturday, August 10, 2013 K.Z. Freeman 0 Comments

It’s funny how people have to die for a story to get interesting. At least that’s how it was for me and this particular tome; one I’ve wanted to read for a while but never seemed to get around to actually doing it. I regret that decision almost as much as I regret not buying the second part of the series along with the first.

Let me explain my opening statement a bit more in detail. While I thought the book was entertaining, it wasn’t really what I’d expected. The beginning was rather boring, and none of the characters really fascinated me in the least. But I kept reading and the previously mentioned trend of slight boredom persisted. The characters were ‘meh’, and the tale was somewhat mehy.

Then something else happened. I was hooked and I didn’t even know why. The truth is, nothing really happens in this book. Ok, that’s not entirely true, a lot of things happen, but nothing really that would make you go “wow, that just happened!” The Name of the Wind is simply this: A guy tells a scribe his story because he’s supposedly some kind of a legend. After some persuasion from the said scribe, or ‘Chronicler’ (who was coincidently the one person I found interesting at the beginning of the book) the guy tells his story. And it goes something like: His family was killed and he was poor and he wanted to go to the university. He later goes there and does stuff and discovers girls. That’s it. Basically. No really, that’s it. Does it sound interesting to you? If it does than you are not like me. If someone would have told me that before, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy reading it none the less!

One thing this book really shows is how people are inherently nice if you take just a little time to talk to them. I liked that a lot and soon enough I was rooting for Kvothe for reasons I can’t really begin to guess. Is it because his family and his troupe had been murdered? Is it because you too wish to know what the Chandrian are up to? Is it because you like the main character? I don’t know. It may as well be a combination of all of these things. It’s like Harry Potter, only different, and I realize I may have just spoken some heresy there, but really, that’s what it’s like. It’s pretty much the same formula, and who cares if it is when it works, eh?

I think it’s the writing that’s the chief culprit here. It’s good. It flows. It shows. And it strikes your heart strings enough times to make you care just a little bit, just enough. And Patrick is a bastard for doing such cruel things to me. But hey, I brought it on myself for plunging into the pages of this beast.

Hmmm... I just realized another reason why I kept reading... because I had expected something REAL and truly remarkable to happen and so kept at it. But nothing did and that was a tad disappointing, to tell you the truth. Hopefully next time.


8/10