Saturday, April 16, 2011

Rothfuss, Patrick (The Wise Man's Fear)

I would not have thought Rothfuss could fall prey to the single worst problem with trilogies. To be brief: you MUST advance the plot in the 2nd book of a trilogy.

If you don't, it remains far less than what it should be-- a bundle of nice stories. I definitely enjoyed the stories (although the bit with Felurian made it eminently clear that it is a man writing this book, not a woman). They made Kvothe a bit more of the legend you know him to be in the interludes. Unfortunately, that is all they did. They did not get you further in learning more about both the Chandrian and the Amyr, and for heaven's sake, what do you think I'm reading this trilogy for?? If that little onion of a mystery isn't peeled back a bit every 100 pages or so, I feel gypped.

Even more important, I fail to understand how he thinks he will fit 20+ years of a tale (book 1+2 = about two years of Kvothe's life) into the last book. Do you expect me to believe that Kvothe brought down a kingdom a mere year after the events of the 2nd book, and has spent the last twenty years hiding out as an innkeeper? That's a level of ridiculousness I'm not willing to believe in.

That all said, his writing is as joyful and unforced as it was in the first book. There's a reason I finished an 1000-page book in a mere 3 weeks. His stories are never dull and they often make you laugh out loud at their cleverness. I am disappointed in what he's done here on a global scale, but don't think I don't want to read the last book right now. I bet we wait 6 years for this next one, though. Ugh.

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