bloodyrosemccoy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2011-08-26 12:06 am
bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2011-08-26 12:06 am
Books I've Been Reading ~ I Liked The Name "Kvothe," Though
What This Book Is About: A frame story in which Kvothe, the man, the legend, reflects upon his life, dictating it to a chronicler who is awed to be in the very presence of such a remarkable individual.
What This Book Is Really About: It is about 700 pages long.
I tried to think of something catchier than that, but to be honest, there isn’t much else I can say about Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind. It is long. It is wordy. It is, more or less, completely unnecessary—its length a product of both author and narrator being fabulously impressed by their own prose/voice. The memoir itself starts on page 82, for crying out loud.
The Rest of the Breakdown, Replete With What I Guess You Could Call Spoilers, Just So You Know:
- Kvothe is told by a traveling tinker/salesman that he is extraordinarily clever. He learns some rudimentary magic while the tinker travels with Kvothe’s caravan and family. (46 pages)
- Mythical demonic assholes slaughter everyone in the caravan but Kvothe. He swears revenge. (11 pages*)
- Immediately forgetting his revenge, Kvothe wanders the streets of a city for years in a grief-induced stupor (75 pages)**
- Kvothe suddenly remembers the whole revenge thing and decides that in order to get information on the asshole demons, he needs to go to Hipster Hogwarts University. He applies, and they let him in because they know he’s the protagonist. (47 pages)
- Kvothe spends years at HHU being an arrogant self-inflated tool, squabbling with the rich dick rival he was issued on his first day, cozying up to Rothfuss’s failed attempt at an intriguing and eccentric female character, and hubrising his way into a bunch of incredibly stupid problems. He also spends a lot of time detailing the logistics of finding an apartment. (270 pages)
- Kvothe and his ladyfriend go all Nancy Drew and investigate some weird shenanigans and goings-on in another town. In an actually interesting twist, they wind up battling a dragon hopped up on PCP or something. It’s not as cool as it might sound, but still, more interesting than anything else so far. (137 pages)
- The rest is all foreshadowing for Book 2. (42 pages)
If You Did Like It, You’re Not Alone: A whole lot of my friends have recommended this book. A few tell me it picks up a bit in Book 2. But even though Rothfuss foreshadowed the goddamn hell out of it, I don’t think I’m going to read it. There’s just not enough return for the investment.
The Other Reason I’m Not Going To Read The Next One: Kvothe annoyed me beyond belief. I’m not gonna spend another 700 pages wanting to smack the protagonist with a shovel.
*Including one page devoted to Kvothe hoping his parents were having some good sex when they were killed.
**I was hoping he’d use his legendary cleverness to become King of Thieves or something, which would have justified the amount of time devoted to it. But he doesn’t, nor does he ever think to look up the tinker pal he spent all that time bonding with. I can even respect that as a a narrative decision, but devoting 75 pages to Kvothe wandering around stealing food and being dazed is a bit much.
What This Book Is Really About: It is about 700 pages long.
I tried to think of something catchier than that, but to be honest, there isn’t much else I can say about Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind. It is long. It is wordy. It is, more or less, completely unnecessary—its length a product of both author and narrator being fabulously impressed by their own prose/voice. The memoir itself starts on page 82, for crying out loud.
The Rest of the Breakdown, Replete With What I Guess You Could Call Spoilers, Just So You Know:
- Kvothe is told by a traveling tinker/salesman that he is extraordinarily clever. He learns some rudimentary magic while the tinker travels with Kvothe’s caravan and family. (46 pages)
- Mythical demonic assholes slaughter everyone in the caravan but Kvothe. He swears revenge. (11 pages*)
- Immediately forgetting his revenge, Kvothe wanders the streets of a city for years in a grief-induced stupor (75 pages)**
- Kvothe suddenly remembers the whole revenge thing and decides that in order to get information on the asshole demons, he needs to go to Hipster Hogwarts University. He applies, and they let him in because they know he’s the protagonist. (47 pages)
- Kvothe spends years at HHU being an arrogant self-inflated tool, squabbling with the rich dick rival he was issued on his first day, cozying up to Rothfuss’s failed attempt at an intriguing and eccentric female character, and hubrising his way into a bunch of incredibly stupid problems. He also spends a lot of time detailing the logistics of finding an apartment. (270 pages)
- Kvothe and his ladyfriend go all Nancy Drew and investigate some weird shenanigans and goings-on in another town. In an actually interesting twist, they wind up battling a dragon hopped up on PCP or something. It’s not as cool as it might sound, but still, more interesting than anything else so far. (137 pages)
- The rest is all foreshadowing for Book 2. (42 pages)
If You Did Like It, You’re Not Alone: A whole lot of my friends have recommended this book. A few tell me it picks up a bit in Book 2. But even though Rothfuss foreshadowed the goddamn hell out of it, I don’t think I’m going to read it. There’s just not enough return for the investment.
The Other Reason I’m Not Going To Read The Next One: Kvothe annoyed me beyond belief. I’m not gonna spend another 700 pages wanting to smack the protagonist with a shovel.
*Including one page devoted to Kvothe hoping his parents were having some good sex when they were killed.
**I was hoping he’d use his legendary cleverness to become King of Thieves or something, which would have justified the amount of time devoted to it. But he doesn’t, nor does he ever think to look up the tinker pal he spent all that time bonding with. I can even respect that as a a narrative decision, but devoting 75 pages to Kvothe wandering around stealing food and being dazed is a bit much.
no subject
The Dickens point was included in his "wandering around in a daze" phase. I would be willing to believe that a kid completely shut down after a trauma like that, so that even Mr. Cleverness might forget how to, say, use sympathy to pick pockets, or that his pal Ben might help him out if he makes the journey. But it was the sort of thing you could cover in WAY less time.
I also had a problem trying to figure out if he was supposed to be an unreliable narrator. His grandiose claims of awesomeness do lend some support to the theory that he's just a self-aggrandizing tool, but the sad part is that even in that case his Mighty Deeds are pretty lame. So far he's scared some burglars, been a dick to his teachers, and set fire to a church to stop a dragon he coincidentally caused to attack the church in the first place. Also he can play the lute fairly well. THOSE ARE NOT MIGHTY DEEDS. WHY AM I READING THIS? I start to really sympathize with the teacher who "unreasonably" hates his ass.
His creepy "just friends" relationship with Denna doesn't endear me to him much, either. It gets a lot more blatantly weird at the end, when his internal monologue reads like a wordy version of this exact comic.
no subject
I hate it when authors try to force sympathy. And the wandering around in a daze bit was so over the top and forced that I wound up not feeling sympathetic even though being in an extended state of shock is a fairly reasonable response for a kid after a trauma like that. Plus the fact that the change from traumatized kid to arrogant douche happened so abruptly.
I kept feeling more sympathetic with the teachers who didn't like him and even the rich rival than I did with the asinine protagonist. I kept hoping a real protagonist would turn up. Somebody who wasn't quite so despicable.
Why do people thing this book/series is so brilliant? Why do otherwise sane and intelligent people think this author is somehow something new and exciting and wonderful? I just don't understand it.
no subject
The forced sympathy thing sounded a lot like whining after a while, didn't it?