The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Aug 28, 2011 emily rated it liked it

Shelves: owned-physical, magic-witches-occult, 2011-to-2015, bildungsroman, fantasy-high-fantasy

3.5 stars, but I just couldn't give it 4 when it hasn't weathered well in my memory. See the addendum at the bottom for thoughts on why.

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i reread 'the name of the wind' last week in preparation for sitting down to read this book, and realized as i did so that i hadn't really retained much of it. but this time, after getting through the obligatory three silences nonsense, i found myself completely enthralled. these two books have everything i loved about 'a wizard of earthsea', but it's not jus 3.5 stars, but I just couldn't give it 4 when it hasn't weathered well in my memory. See the addendum at the bottom for thoughts on why.

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i reread 'the name of the wind' last week in preparation for sitting down to read this book, and realized as i did so that i hadn't really retained much of it. but this time, after getting through the obligatory three silences nonsense, i found myself completely enthralled. these two books have everything i loved about 'a wizard of earthsea', but it's not just a story of "yay i'm going to school to be a wizard". there's a bit of the atmosphere of 'the prestige' in there, a bit of arthurian legend, a bit of a dozen other fantasy stories i've loved that mix to make a really fun reading experience. but for all that there's a strange quality to the book that has only become clear to me after two days of thinking about it.

in a lot of fantasy series you get a sense early on of who's an important character to latch onto, and who isn't. who's going to stick around, and who's just an anecdotal character. in this series (so far, at least) almost no one besides kvothe feels like a central character (except for denna, obviously, but her mystery is a whole separate thing for me). wil, simmon, fela and the others at the university are interesting and fun, and i enjoy their presence in the books, but i don't have a sense of where or how they fit into the larger story. same with the maer and the mercenaries and the adem that kvothe meets on his travels. how important are they? should i get attached or not? are they still a part of kvothe's life, or even still alive, in the later timeline?

because the thing is, with these books there's the knowledge hanging over my head the entire time that Bad Shit is going to go down, and a lot of it. not only does kvothe still have to get booted from the university and presumably kill the king, but he is nowhere even close to hunting down the chandrian. there seems to be a great gulf between the kvothe telling this story, and the kvothe he's telling the story about. who the hell is denna and who is her patron? where does bast enter into the story and what the heck is he up to now? furthermore, i get the strong sense that when kvothe's done telling his history to chronicler there's a bit of asskicking still to be done, and where is that going to fit? and while i don't doubt that rothfuss has a lot of plot devices still up his sleeve, it's hard to believe he's going to be able to wrap this all up in one more book.

aside from all that, though, i honestly could not put this book down. and while its end left me troubled and feeling disjointed and a bit overwhelmed with all the pieces of story thrown at me, and completely at a loss as to how they might fit together, i was sad to finish it. the writing is good, and the story is intriguing and the parts flow smoothly from one part to the next.

Addendum:
On rereading, I have to say there's more that bugs me about both of these books that I think I was too caught up in the story to notice the first time through. The plot holes-- all the questions I asked in the second-to-last paragraph-- are much more jarringly noticeable, and the degree to which Kvothe is the typical man's man archetypal hero gets a bit eye-rolly after two books of it.

Maybe it's just that (perhaps an unfair comparison, but one I'm going to make anyway) on the heels of The Republic of Thieves, this sort of high fantasy that fits the tropes instead of subverting them feels rote and expected. There's something to be said for the fact that as I discovered with my reread of TNOTW, with two years' distance between now and the last time I read the book, I *still* didn't remember a whole lot about it. Some scenes stuck out, some plot threads, but the bits that are the most interesting are still the bits with current-day Kvothe, Chronicler and Bast. The rest is just a bit too David Copperfield to make it into the top of my heap.

I'll still read the third one when it comes out, of course, and I'm sure it'll make great TV when the show finally gets off the ground. But thus far the books haven't weathered the test of time as well as I'd have wished they would. ...more

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Mar 16, 2011 Robert rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2011-reading-list

A masterful follow up to the excellent Name of the Wind. Rothfuss continues in the same style, wonderful stories tied together by an interesting narrative style and interesting characters.

Anyone who's a serious fan of the fantasy genre should have these two books on either their "read" list, or their "to read" list. ...more

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Jul 10, 2010 Andrea rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, magic-school

The story telling is just as rich as the first book, and though the journey was long, I never got bored. A lot of new mysteries are presented in this book, and a lot of details, but by the way he leaves out big events because they don't advance the story, you know that everything he includes here must be important to the outcome. There are so many questions in the series, and the author did a wonderful job of presenting you with just enough information to make you feel like you might be beginnin ...more

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Dec 13, 2016 Lasairfiona rated it really liked it

Shelves: borrownotbuy

I read this and stopped part of the way through at what I thought was a slow spot. Turns out I was literally four pages from sweet action. Too bad I put it down for a whole year before picking it back up so I had to start it back over.

I am absolutely waiting for the next one.

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Apr 03, 2012 Bianca rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

too many distraction from the main goal which is to find the chandrian.. i hope the third book will be more enlightening..

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Jun 14, 2014 Bryan457 rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, borrow-library-audio, wizards-n-magicians

Part 2 in the continuing story of Kvothe. I enjoyed this quite a bit, but the foreshadowing of disaster and darkness and tragedy are worrying me. The last book, the ending of the story will make or break this for me.

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