The Wise Man's Fear continues the mesmerizing slow reveal of the story of Kvothe the Bloodless, an orphaned trouper who became a fearsome hero before banishing himself to a tiny town in the middle of Newarre. The readers of Patrick Rothfuss's outstanding first book, The Name of the Wind, which has gathered both a cult following and a wide readership in the four years since it came out, will remember that Kvothe promised to tell his tale of wonder and woe to Chronicler, the king's scribe, in three days. The Wise Man's Fear makes up day two, and uncovers enough to satisfy readers and make them desperate for the full tale, from Kvothe's rapidly escalating feud with Ambrose to the shockingly brutal events that mark his transformation into a true warrior, and to his encounters with Felurian and the Adem. Rothfuss remains a remarkably adept and inventive storyteller, and Kvothe's is a riveting tale about a boy who becomes a man who becomes a hero and a killer, spinning his own mythology out of the ether until he traps himself within it. Drop everything and read these books.
Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Series: The Kingkiller Chronicle
Genre: Fantasy novel
Publisher: DAW Books
Media type: Hardcover
Pages: 994 pp
ISBN-13: 978-0756404734
Preceded by: The Name of the Wind
Publication date: 1 March 2011
Reader Review:
If, like me, you were so impressed with The Name of the Wind that you neglected all but the most pressing business until you turned the final page, you may have decided to give it a quick re-read in anticipation of the sequel. If you did, you probably spotted this quote in Chapter 43: "There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."
After a long but worthwhile wait, we now have the second novel in The Kingkiller Chronicle, and its title refers directly back to the quote: The Wise Man's Fear. (And by the way, if you didn't feel like rereading book one, Patrick Rothfuss posted a wonderful web comic recap on his blog.)
Saying that the level of anticipation for The Wise Man's Fear was high is an understatement, especially given that The Name of the Wind was only Patrick Rothfuss' debut. It's not as if this is the concluding volume of a long multi-volume saga, decades in the making. The Name of the Wind struck such a powerful chord with many readers that, before long, messages started popping up left and right, complaining that things were taking too long and couldn't he write a bit more quickly?
Well, merciful Tehlu be praised, Patrick Rothfuss took his time, polishing and refining his manuscript until it stood up to his own standards. The result is The Wise Man's Fear, a novel that for the most part fulfills the promise of The Name of the Wind. You'll find the same sweeping prose, deft characterization, rousing adventure, emotional highs and lows, and just plain and simple gripping reading of the "I couldn't put this book down even if my house caught fire around me" variety.
Also, there's much more of it, in terms of sheer length. Weighing in at about 1,000 pages, The Wise Man's Fear is a heftier tale with a much broader scope. Where most of The Name of the Wind was set in and around the University, the sequel starts off there but soon has Kvothe venturing out into the world. As a result, some of the blank spaces on the map start to get filled in, giving this fantasy world a welcome new level of depth. Make no mistake, Kvothe is still front and center, but the details of the world's geography are starting to come into focus, as well as its history, with the central mystery still being the exact nature of the Chandrian and the Amyr.
And Kvothe... is still Kvothe. One of the most memorable characters to appear in fantasy in the last decade, he again carries the tale easily. Let's not forget that The Name of the Wind's blurb, as well as the title of the series, seemed to spell out several major plot points: anyone who read the back cover of The Name of the Wind knew the edited highlights of Kvothe's life even before opening the book. How often do you see that, and even if you did, how often did it actually succeed?
Here, Patrick Rothfuss makes it work purely on the strength of his main character. Kvothe, telling his own story to the patient Chronicler, has so much sheer panache that his personality has the same effect as a minor tsunami on the people around him. In some ways, he's like a taller, more musically gifted version of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan. Sure, when he describes a noble as being as "self-centered as a gyroscope", you can't help but think that this could easily apply to him too, but his charm, brilliance and inexorable forward momentum easily make up for it.
Then -- next brilliant trick -- to forestall those readers who might get annoyed at an impossibly brilliant and already semi-legendary character, the framing story shows us a much different present-day Kvothe, now going by the name Kote, who seems to be a shadow of his former self: a small town innkeeper with the lowest of profiles and the gentlest demeanour. The fact that we still don't know exactly how we got from Kvothe the high-flying warrior-arcanist-singer to Kote the soft-spoken innkeeper creates the tension that makes these novels so powerful. Evil is abroad, war is coming, and Kvothe, so different from how he describes himself in his story, hints that he is somehow responsible -- and, to top it all, we still don't know exactly how and why. Maybe most disturbing (or exciting, depending on your perspective and amount of patience): if Kvothe is recounting his past to Chronicler in three days, does that mean that the real conclusion of the story, describing the current and future state of the world, will only follow in books 4, 5, 6... ?
Regardless,The Wise Man's Fear is another excellent novel. Just getting to read more about the young, brilliant Kvothe at the University is a pleasure, although it did feel as if the first few hundred pages of this novel moved a bit more slowly and actually could have been part of the first book, with Kvothe's eventual departure making a perfect starting point for the sequel. Then again, we know this is meant to be one long tale split across three days of narration by present-day Kvothe to Chronicler, so it makes sense to think of these books as one big story with somewhat arbitrary cut-off points. (And oh, I don't think it's a spoiler to mention that the ending of this novel is once again of the somewhat anti-climactic "and then they all went to sleep to continue the story the next day" variety.)
Patrick Rothfuss's prose is still a pleasure to read. He does high comedy as expertly as heart-breaking tragedy. He occasionally throws out a sentence that's so perfectly on point, it's not hard to see why his book-signing events draw such huge crowds: "Hespe's mouth went firm. She didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry."
If the plotting is sometimes a bit transparent, with the timing and sequence of some events being so convenient that it flirts with improbability, it's all easy to forgive because -- and this is really all that matters, in the end -- The Wise Man's Fear is more sheer fun to read than most fantasy novels I've read since -- well, since The Name of the Wind, come to think of it. Plus, we finally get to read the bit about Felurian...
If you're looking for solid, character-driven, consistently entertaining but occasionally quite dark fantasy that has more heart than several other series combined, you couldn't do much better than Patrick Rothfuss' KINGKILLER CHRONICLE. And now the long wait begins for book 3...
-- by Stefan Raets "Stefan"
I have been waiting for years for this book. I love Patrick Rothfuss - I loved his first book, I love his blog, I love hearing him speak in person, I love his charity work... I'm just a huge fan all around.
That said, I was disappointed by this book. It was a good book - but not nearly the quality of The Name of the Wind.
As others have mentioned, the story just isn't as tight as NOTW. The "worst" part of NOTW was the trip to Trebon to and the killing of the draccus, if only because it seemed to drag on far too long. Each of the segments of this book have a smiliar quality to them. The University segment was long, but that moved along at a good clip. The time in Vintas dragged, as did the hunt for the bandits. The time with Felurian also seemed to drag on and on... and then, the time with the Adem. The part that made each of those segments difficult to chew on was the fact that Kvothe did not progress as a character. At the end of WMF, he knows how to make love and he is a decent swordsmen (not nearly as good as the legendary people who trained him). That's all that could be accomplished in 1,000 pages? Really?
If this was to be a 4-5 book series, I could buy this as a decent book two. I can't fathom how the series will end with one more book. Either Kvothe isn't as cool as the NOTW made him seem, or book three is going to get about 85% of the series' action in it. Too much of the story remains untold.
This is not to say the book isn't a pleasure to read - Rothfuss' skill as a wordsmith ensures that the story remains interesting (or I probably would have put the book down). Perhaps the buildup to WMF was too great - perhaps I cared a little too much about a literary character. However, I can honestly say I was disappointed - it reminded me of my disappointment at reading A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin a few years back - a good book, but a letdown after A Storm of Swords.
Let's hope Pat Rothfuss and Kvothe recapture the magic in Doors of Stone (or whatever the title ends up being).
-- by D-Rock
When I reviewed Patrick Rothfuss's debut novel, The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1), I called it "the best debut novel - the best fantasy novel - in years." I was particularly excited because unlike some other seemingly unending series, Rothfuss said in his blog that all three books were written. Almost four years later, we finally have book two. Was it worth the wait?
"Wind" was such a strong first novel that it set very high expectations for the sequels. In particular, Rothfuss's writing, his use of language, was astonishingly good for a debut novel. If he didn't hang out in the Sci Fi/Fantasy ghetto with the rest of us, he'd be getting rave reviews from the New York Times Review of Books. "Wise Man" is equally well written. It's not better writing, but then that would be a difficult task, given the high benchmark.
This is projected as a trilogy, and the second novel of a trilogy is always challenging to write. Think of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings. Often the middle novel is nothing more than a bridge between the setup in the first book and the conclusion in the third. Rothfuss made his task a little easier by telegraphing parts of Kvothe's life story in "Wind," but the technique gave him challenges as well. His success in writing a compelling middle novel varies on the narrative thread involved. Recall Rothfuss is telling three different stories: Kvothe's biography to The Chronicler, how Kvothe lost his powers, and whatever crisis is looming the background.
The tale to The Chronicler is well-told. Rothfuss seems to derive as much pleasure as Kvothe in reveling in that tale. The tale of Kvothe's lost powers is less well advanced. A certain rash pledge - Kvothe makes many rash pledges - may be the key, but it cannot explain everything. And the tale of the impending crisis is not advanced at all. It's barely mentioned. In a very real way, much of the narrative is not advanced, and that's a bit disappointing.
Rothfuss's gift for characterization is on full display: each of the characters with whom Kvothe spends significant time is well-developed, and the Felaurian is particularly well done. None of them are stock fantasy characters; they aren't the cardboard cutouts that plague so much of fantasy writing. And with one new character he has created a sense of ambiguous, poorly understood doom that is the equal of any recent fantasy writing.
All of which leaves us waiting for the third and final novel in the trilogy. First, I am a bit doubtful that Rothfuss can cram a conclusion to all three threads into one novel, even one longer than "Wise Man"'s 1008 pages. Certainly the pacing will have to be changed. The failure of "Wise Man" to advance critical elements puts more of a burden on the third book. If Rothfuss can bring it off and preserve the high level of writing, including the pacing, then we have a genuine superstar. The temptation to force the pace, compress events or resort to a narrative trick will be great.
Second, "Wise Man" is bracketed by careful descriptions of three kinds of silence. It's effective in the context of the narrative, but I sincerely hope Rothfuss isn't telling his readers to gird themselves for another four year wait to have the conclusion.
As a stand-alone novel, five stars, if only for the quality of the writing. As the middle novel of a projected trilogy - and recognizing that it's hard to judge without the conclusion at hand - just three stars. Brilliantly written, vivid characters, fine pacing. This is an exceptionally pleasurable read.
But now we are back to waiting.
- by James D. DeWitt "Alaska Fan"
What do you think of this book? Please share your thought with us!
No comments:
Post a Comment