For years, people have been telling me to read The Name of the Wind, the first book of the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy by Patrick Rothfuss. I had many other things ahead of it in my reading list, and no one could really give me convincing reasons to read it, so I'd put it off.
I finally gave in and read it recently, and I have some thoughts. I will try to share them in as spoiler-free a way as possible, but I will discuss some of the basics of the book.
A Story About Storytelling
There are a lot of stories told throughout the course of this book. The conceit of the book itself is that the main character is telling his life's story. In that life, he is raised in a theater troupe, so they have more stories. As he searches for answers about something that happened in his past, much of the information that he seeks has fallen into legend, so more stories. Stories even seem to work themselves in when they don't seem especially relevant to what's going on directly (although a lot of times, these stories seem to come back later, and I imagine that they will prove relevant to the grander main plot in the next two books.)
As a writer, the varying stories told throughout the book are interesting to me. I'm intrigued by how Rothfuss portrays the story telling styles and focuses of the different storytellers throughout the book. Each storyteller has a different style, voice, and purpose behind the story that they tell. This is intriguing to me.
A Rich and Detailed World
Rothfuss has clearly put a lot of thought into the setting of his story. Complex and varied cultures with detailed histories breath life into the world. It feels like a world that has a life to it and is tangibly real rather than being painted up around the characters. The level of detail provided, be it linguistic, cultural, or even in terms of physical distances, is amazing and natural. Because it is told by the main character's story, it is generally mixed in narratively and conversationally, rather than drawing attention to the exposition. This makes it feel like the world fits into itself, rather than being forced upon the reader.
A Story so Real it Doesn't Quite Flow
One of the complaints that I have about the story is that it doesn't feel very focused. There are a lot of side plots and a lot of events that don't seem to tie in very well with the "main plot". In part, this is because it is a person telling their life's story, so there isn't a "main plot" in the traditional sense, even if there is, in fact, a defining purpose that drives the main character throughout the story.
A part of the realism of the story is that not everything that happens to someone is specifically focused on one story arc, event, or thing. The fact that it doesn't feel like how a story progresses is something that makes it more difficult to read (for me at least), but also at the same time more like real life.
An Unquestionable Gary Sue
The one thing that seems the most unrealistic about the story is the main character. He is a bit too perfect. He is good at everything he attempts, and he learns so fast that anything he doesn't know he can pick up with unnatural speed. Everything from magic to music to thievery to talking he is not just good at, but more or less the best at. He claims that he knows nothing about women, but he usually says the absolute perfect thing to charm them. He is a character who has almost no flaws, except potentially that his emotions sometimes affect his judgment. The conflicts he faces usually have nothing to do with his own faults so much as the circumstances of the world around him.
Concluding Thoughts
Overall, I liked the book. It's extremely well written, and the varying events in it, while often being largely disconnected, are almost all interesting in their own ways. It's not the next thing that I am going to pick up, but I will probably read the next book sometime. It seems like I could have plenty of time to get to it before the third book comes out.
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