The book continues to lay out the life of Kvothe, our ridiculously over-talented protagonist, through his adventures at the university and thankfully, in this book, breaking the Harry Potter mold to venture out into the real world for some adventure. Kvothe certainly adds to his real-world experience: gaining favour in a royal court, leading a band of mercenaries, and training with the Adem super-ninjas.
The sections of the book where he lives with Felurian and the Adem felt a bit like obligatory "skilling up" in a computer game. Those sections seemed to be about "+10 experience with women" and "+10 combat skills", getting Kvothe ready for book three. At least they were entertaining training montages.
In the first book I loved Elodin, but I think his character sucked in this one. His "classes" were supposed to be ridiculous, but I found some of the comments and humour better suited to college jocks than to Elodin's eccentric and mysterious academic character:
Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.At times Rothfuss used some bizarre time compression, like his description of the entire boat trip from the university:
In brief, there was a storm, piracy, treachery, and shipwreck, although not in that order. It also goes without saying that I did a great many things, some heroic, some ill-advised, some clever and audacious.Sounds to me like his editor told him to take out an unnecessary plot line, but he didn't want to completely remove it. And this was only one of a number of times that Kvothe loses absolutely all of his possessions except his extremely expensive lute which somehow miraculously survives each time.
Another character incongruity that bothered me was after Kvothe left the Adem he seemed to throw out all the psychological lessons they taught him and turn into a bloodthirsty arsehole. Within a few pages he was killing a whole heap of people and saying things like:
And if you ever do anything to either of them, I'll know. I will come here, and kill you, and leave your body hanging in a tree.Oh, and I haven't read such ridiculous sexual tension as when Kvothe and Denna are bathing in the stream near Imre since the Twilight series.
Having said all that, I really did like this book, and it was pretty much impossible to put down. The world Rothfuss has created is fascinating. The branches of magic: sympathy, sygaldry, naming etc. are well presented, and semi-scientific. I love the Chandrian, so dark, myseterious, and powerful that even speaking their true names can be a death sentence.
Now for some spoliers and plot guessing. I suspect that Bredon is an Amyr - he is too involved in the story to not show up again. He may also turn out to be Mister Ash - Denna's patron, or her patron could be one of the Chandrian. I think there are also more surprises coming about Bast, and I'm sure Kvothe's little Adem training friend will save his life at least once.
Update: I originally gave this 4.5, but decided I was being too harsh. 5 stars!
Another spoiler alert...
ReplyDeleteWhat about the Maer's wife? Is she clearly not Kvothe's aunt? His father said in NotW that Kvothe's mother was a lady before he 'spirited her away' or somesuch.
Yep, Bredon has to be an Amyr, I think because the Cthaen alluded to it a little when he said the Maer is closer to the Amyr than he realises.
And for Mister Ash to be a Chandrian seems too easy. Kvothe does swear by his name and his power, his good left hand and the moon that he won't try to find Denna's patron. This might explain why he can't do sympathy in the inn, and doesn't play music, because he uncovers Mister Ash in his search for the Amyr.
I think Kvothe going off the handle and killing people after his time with the Adem was still of The Path. Sometimes the killin' needs doin' and he was certainly in the right according to the medicine woman he meets in town after taking the girls home. His venomous words and actions after he finds out the Edema Ruh are impostors is just characteristic of Kvothe being a hot tempered bad ass. I don't think the Adem could coax that out of him. It would make him less interesting.
I agree completely with the shipwreck scene, and will add that skipping the trial where he learned to speak Tema in a day was probably an even more blatant attempt at shortening the story to make his publisher happy. He even had to justify leaving it out of his story by creating some tension between Chronicler and Kvothe in the inn.
I hope one day Rothfuss will release his preferred text version with all those parts in. I just don't know how he could justify leaving in the banal descriptions of hunting in the forest for bandits. Perhaps he was trying to pace the story better so it didn't make the encounter with Cinder look contrived, but if there ever was a place to cull some storyline...
I agree with the 4.5 out of 5, but I'm giving it an extra 0.5 because Rothfuss is my favourite author and I'm allowed to be biased.
Agree about the Maer's wife. A friend and I were also speculating that Auri is an Amyr (or at least associated with them) and the University was created with the sole goal of protecting whatever is locked behind those doors in the archives.
ReplyDeleteDo you think this was better than the first book? I'd have to re-read name of the wind, it has been a while.
I've actually been thinking about breaking my rule of not changing ratings and giving it 5 stars because it was pretty damn good.