The Name of the Wind
The Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 1
Patrick Rothfuss
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy
Themes: Creative Power, Epics, Fantasy Races, Schools, Wizards
****+
Description
Kvothe the Bloodless. Kvothe Kingkiller. Slayer of demons, seducer of women, master of many a dark and forbidden art, speaker of the ever-changing
name of the wind... a man straight out of a storyteller's wildest yarns, the fabulous Taborlin the Great made flesh upon the world.
At least, that's how the fireside tale-tellers speak of him.
After much searching, Devan the Chronicler finally tracks the source of the stories to a humble rural town, where the greatest living legend in the
known world hides behind a pseudonym and a bar in a quiet roadside inn. Devan wants to record the true story of Kvothe, from the man's own lips... but
what he finds is far more than he bargained for. It is a tale of pain and loss, of best intentions gone awry. It is the tale of a boy filled with an
unquenchable thirst for knowledge, who set out in search of the name of the wind and found instead dangers he could never have imagined.
It is also a tale, as Devan discovers, whose darkest chapters have yet to be written...
Review
The first in a (probable) trilogy, The Name of the Wind sets itself apart from many epic fantasies by focusing almost exclusively on a single character. Kvothe relates the story of his youth, the passions and pains that started him - if unintentionally - on the road to becoming a living legend. The general thrust of this journey should be familiar to most fantasy readers, but Rothfuss does a good enough job getting into Kvothe's head and world that it still feels original. As a protagonist, Kvothe brings some nicely humanizing flaws to the table, revealing the often less-than-noble mind at work behind his heroism (or the acts that become the basis for his heroic reputation; part of the point of the story is how people tend to read their own intentions into the truth, creating their own legends in the retelling.) The book is more than just an extended flashback, however, as troubles from his past seem to have followed him even to his self-imposed exile, endangering the lives of his new neighbors (not to mention Chronicler himself.) Perhaps it is this - the knowledge that present-day Kvothe still has danger breathing down his neck, as he sits and relates the extended story of his childhood - that made the story seem to bog down more than once. I'm used to fantasy novels indulging in "scenic routes," meandering through trivial matters and sidetracks, but with the greater threats hovering I found myself growing antsy nonetheless. There's also the matter of Kvothe's love interest, a woman of many names, who remains almost maddeningly vague throughout the story. For a "wild woman" who seems to wander the length and breadth of the world at will, she shows a disconcerting lack of basic street smarts toward the end of the story. For the most part, though, it held my interest. I look forward to reading Book 2, when it drops to a reasonable price (and my reading backlog thins out.)