The Name of the Wind
By Patrick Rothfuss

A Retroview by Eric Allen

After reading The Wise Man's Fear, absolutely hating it in every way imaginable, and arguing almost non-stop with people about it for more than a year now, and being insulted repeatedly for simply saying I wasn't looking forward to the next book in the series, I thought I'd take a look back at the first book in the series to see if it still held up after seeing the racing skid on Patrick Rothfuss' jockey shorts that he tried to pass off as the second volume of his Kingkiller Chronicle. This is the third time that I've read this book, and every time I read it, I come away with a different opinion of it entirely independent of the previous one.

The Name of the Wind is the beginning of the tale of the man behind the legend of Kvothe The Bloodless, Kvothe the Kingkiller, and a dozen other titles that sound equally cool. I really like how the author began this book with a disclaimer that legends are usually just fairy tales, more myth and fiction than reality. Real life is often much more boring and mundane. Kvothe is a broken down innkeeper now, recounting the story of his life, telling us about the man behind the legend, and the true story of it all.

As this most recent run through of this book was in audio format, and it's been a while since I picked up my print copy of the book, please forgive me if I misspell anything. It's always a problem when reviewing Sci-fi or Fantasy, going by the audio version, because these genres typically have a lot of things that aren't exactly spelled the way the narrator reads them.

Young Kvothe begins his life, and his story, with being a member of a traveling group of his world's equivalent of Gypsies, the Edema Rue. They roam the lands, telling stories, acting out plays, sharing music, and generally being peaceful storytellers. When an old wizardly fellow hooks up with them, he notices how incredibly brilliant Kvothe is and tells his parents that he might have a bright future as a scholar or even an Arcanist if he were to be sent to study at the University.

Long story short, one day his entire troupe is murdered because of a song that was getting a little too close to the truth about mythic figures called the Chandrien, and Kvothe is allowed to keep his life because ... and wanders off in shock with his father's lute, to play his sorrows to the wind and the trees.

There is a common misconception that I have noticed with people who read these books. This is not the story of Kvothe seeking vengeance for the murder of his parents. It is one of his driving influences, when he can be bothered to remember it, but this is more the story of the man behind the legend, rather than the man seeking revenge. There is a distinction. However, this is also overshadowed by the very simple fact that Kvothe never consciously decides to build up legends about himself, which is something of a failing in my opinion, and leads in to many of my complaints about Rothfuss' lack of structure, and the thought that he's basically making it up as he goes. If this is the entire purpose of the series, don't you think that it would be important to include a scene where Kvothe decides to do it, after being surprised about all of the rumors springing up about him for instance? He never does, which is a black mark against him as a character for me, and against Rothfuss as the writer for completely ignoring a vital tidbit of character development.

So Kvothe wanders through several pieces of classic and contemporary literature because though the author is brilliant with words, he seems to be a little short on story details of his own, and shamelessly borrows them from Dickens and Rowling instead. Until he finally finds himself a student at the University, poor as dirt, scraping every scrap of money together to pay for his tuition, and borrowing heavily from someone of unsavory reputation in town. And then he hears a rumor about the Chandrien, runs off to chase it, meets his love interest who just happens to be there for no real reason, fights a dragon, and returns home pretty much empty handed where he finally, after seeking to be able to do it since his early childhood, calls the wind after his livelihood was taken from him, and assails his biggest rival with it.

Yeah, not much of a summary, sorry, but Patrick Rothfuss isn't much for a cohesive narrative that all ties into something. My summary is rambling and skips all over the place, because, frankly, so does the book.

The Good? Patrick Rothfuss is extremely good with words. He writes so beautifully that if he were to describe paint drying for twenty pages, it would likely be captivating enough that his readers would eat it up. That isn't meant to be a slight against his readers, but a compliment of his ability to write. His writing is very well thought out and put together, and quite poetic as well. I've heard rumors that it took him eleven years to write this book, and it really shows in all of the care that's been put into almost every single sentence. The book is so beautifully written it's almost a work of art. Combine the pretty writing with Rothfuss' sense of humor and you almost don't even need a storyline in this book for it to be entertaining. The fact that it doesn't really have one notwithstanding.

The whole, man behind the legend concept is really intriguing. Like I said earlier, this is not a story about how Kvothe avenges his parents, it is a story about how he built the legend of himself up, and how he attained one of his greatest childhood yearnings, calling the wind. Still, this book really needed a scene where Kvothe consciously decides to build up his own legend. Its lack makes all of his work to do so seem more by accident and happenstance rather than an active pursuit as we are told it is in the next book. Rothfuss is excellent with words, but boy does he suck at developing his characters' motives in a way that they are clear to the reader. This is a VITAL element of storytelling. It is very hard to sympathize with a protagonist whose motives are a complete mystery, and seems to be doing everything completely by accident. That's bad character development and bad storytelling.

The bad? This is something I've noticed after reading the second book. Rothfuss doesn't appear to know the meaning of the words "character development". Kvothe goes on a long journey from childhood as a traveling entertainer, to an orphan playing his father's lute because he's too shocked by tragedy to do anything else, to a street rat, to a poor as dirt college student who moonlights as a dragon slayer and has really awkward relations with girls who are about as interesting as a pile of sawdust. Throughout this book we see Kvothe lose every single thing that he holds dear one by one. We see him sink lower and lower, have everything stripped from him until finally, he calls the wind in a moment of rage and frustration at the last man to take the last thing he held dear from him. And he doesn't change as a character through any of it. He doesn't grow or develop. He's the same smartass kid at the end as he is at the beginning. Moving a character to a different location and assailing him with different issues is not a substitute for character development. Moving to a different setting will NEVER be a substitute for watching a character learn, and grow as a person to overcome his trials rather than walk away from them and go somewhere else where new trials await.

I understand this is the first book of a trilogy, but when characters don't learn and grow as people, even in the first book of a trilogy, I tend to not care about them very much. And when I don't care about them, I certainly don't care what happens to them. When I don't care what happens to them, there is no suspense or tension at all, because I frankly just couldn't care any less. Character development is a VITAL element of telling a story. It's what makes the reader connect with the hero of the story on an emotional level. When we can't connect emotionally, it's hard to really care. Kvothe has been through all of these horrible things, and he hasn't changed. He hasn't grown up any. He's still the child that he was before any of them happened to him. A normal person, or even a normal character in a story, would learn something from all this tragedy. He would come away a better person, or sink into the role of a villain, having learned a clear life lesson or two, and having grown up a bit. He hasn't triumphed over anything, or learned anything new about himself, or about the world around him. He's called the wind completely by accident after the last straw broke his back. In fact, one of the recurring themes of the second book is that Kvothe doesn't know how to call the wind, it just sort of happens when it's convenient to the plot, so he hasn't even learned that.

The Ugly? For the longest time I didn't really understand this book. The first two times I read it I came away thinking that it didn't have a climax, because there was no hugely climactic event at the ending. I've come to realize that the climax of this book is one of the more quiet and emotional moments of the story, rather than a big, over the top action scene. The climax of this book is when Kvothe calls the wind. It took me a really long time to see that. It is what the entire book builds toward. Everything that happens in this book leads up to that moment. And you know what . . . it was really kind of weak. I'm sorry, but it was. If I have to read a book three times before it dawns on me that it even has a climax at all, that's a weak, weak, WEAK climax. I get that this is the first volume of a series. I get that not every climax has to be huge and full of action. That's not what I'm saying here. I'm saying that the tone and pacing of the narrative is so poorly done that it was impossible to tell that the climax even came and went until I read the book for the third time. This is a problem that was ballooned up to be the most horrible thing about this book's sequel. Patrick Rothfuss doesn't really know the first thing about tone or pacing. He doesn't seem to realize that when your characters are at the moment you have built them up to with a thousand pages of story, you sort of need to handle it with more emotion and fanfare than any other scene in the book.

I always seem to fall back on The Wheel of Time when I'm looking for an example. If you look at the climax of The Gathering Storm, it's a quiet, emotional moment too. But when it arrives, you can see how the ENTIRE series before that point has built toward it. The tone and pacing of the book changes, all of the pent up emotion overflows and avalanches into a striking and memorable scene. When it comes, you KNOW it is the climax. You FEEL that it is the climax. The emotion and the pacing TELL YOU that it's the climax. And you know what, it was beautiful. It was one of the most beautiful scenes in any book I've ever read. Why? Because the character in question had developed as a person throughout the series, sinking deeper and deeper into darkness and insanity until, finally, he realized what the point of even continuing on was. It was a quiet moment. It wasn't a huge action scene. It was a scene of personal realization that had been built up for twelve books and when it came, it was earth-shatteringly huge. It was a moment when a character made a choice and transcended who he was to become what he needed to be. It rivals any of The Wheel of Time's action climaxes. And when it came and went, you knew something life-changing had happened to the character. You knew that things had progressed to the next level. It was, by far, my favorite scene in the entire series to date. But with Rothfuss' climax here, it was like listening to Ben Stein read a shopping list for all that the tone and pacing changes.

I'm sorry, but there is more to writing a book than being able to write beautifully. And don't get me wrong, Rothfuss DOES write beautifully, and this book is VERY entertaining in its own way, however, the tone and pacing are just all over the place. And instead of getting better with his next book, Rothfuss got worse. The rising actions of this story that build toward that moment are almost invisible, and when the climax finally arrives, it can come and go without being noticed unless you're really looking for it. I shouldn't have to get out my magnifying glass and go over a book three times, scrutinizing every detail, before I realize what the entire thing was leading up to. That's a huge failure on Rothfuss' part in the storytelling department. Even the most beautiful poem ever penned has no meaning if it's read in monotone. The most beautiful flower on Earth can't be fully appreciated by the blind, and it's Rothfuss' job as the writer to help us see, and he, frankly, completely failed to do so.

In conclusion, despite this book's lack of character development, atrocious pacing, and inconsistent and erratic tone, it was still highly entertaining. It was beautifully and poetically written and you can tell that the author put a whole lot of love and care into every single word of it. Patrick Rothfuss is an exemplary writer, but as a storyteller he falls a little flat. Yes people, there is a difference between the two. It takes BOTH of these things to produce an excellent book, and Rothfuss has only ever displayed one of them. All of the problems that I saw in this book do not take away much from the enjoyment I found in it. Why else would I read a book three times if I didn't enjoy it, after all? I am likely being a little more critical than is strictly fair here due to the fact that every problem I saw here was magnified about a thousand times in this book's sequel, which was a bloated, incomprehensible mess of contradictions and tangents, but I think four stars is a pretty fair rating here. Five stars means that there is literally not one single thing that could possibly be improved upon, and that just isn't true, no matter how much I enjoyed this book.


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