Saturday, January 15, 2011

The Name of the Wind

There's a good story in here, but unfortunately it doesn't start until Kvothe goes to University**.  Everything prior to that is backstory and setting up the framing device, and unfortunately it's boring and unnecessary. Cut it all out, start with Kvothe arriving at the University (or leaving Tarbean; either would be fine), and then work in the necessary backstory as you go along.  It would be far more interesting as a reader to not know he's in the act of relating his story to Chronicler until he pauses in the telling.


At any rate, Harry, I mean Kvothe, arrives at University some years after his parents were killed by Voldemort and the Death Eaters, I mean Lanre and the Chandrian; and arouses the ire of Professor Snape, I mean Hemme; the enmity of Malfoy, I mean Ambrose; the professional interest of the nutty-seeming headmaster Dumbledore, I mean master of naming Elodin; the romantic interest of Ginny and Cho, I mean Denna and Fela; the friendship of Hermione and Ron, I mean Wil and Simmon...  I'm saying this all a little tongue-in-cheek and stretching the analogies, especially since Rothfuss was writing all this before Harry Potter was even published, but... you get the picture.  It's worth a read, but you'll want to skim until the story really starts, and be warned that it's the first in a trilogy (really the first third of a longer book) and it essentially ends "well, that's enough of the story for today".  Knowing that, I probably would have waited until the entire trilogy was published before reading it.  


** ... around 200 pages in.  If Sarahmac hadn't read it first and recommended it with a warning that it starts slow, I would have dumped the book long before then

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