© 2007
So I tried The Name of the Wind. I picked it up because it is said -- or I have heard it claimed -- as being "literary" fantasy, and I gave a copy in a store a test read and liked the language. (Though, I bought my copy online, a nice hardback for next to nothing.) Great first page, but that is usually an illusion, as it is here. And the book does bear the stain of that phenomenon of the first page seemingly having been given more attention, in terms of language, that any other twenty pages combined. But I will give Rothfuss a little credit in that his writing never becomes wholly pedestrian. Not that I would call it terribly artistic, but he can turn a phrase, and it is far better than the likes of Sanderson. (Well, on page 79 he whips out an "insatiable lust for knowledge," which is so trite a phrase it might on its own disqualify a book from being "literary.")
Unfortunately, the plot does often become pedestrian. I quit reading at page 225, when Kvothe reached Inma, after the rather poor chapters of the journey thereto and his momentary infatuation with Denna. Which I found pointless fluff used only to fill out the journey. But, then, it seemed that much of the last many pages were just filled out with fluff -- which is to say the whole of his time in Tarbean. Yes, granted, this is the nature of the book, a long biographical narrative, but that does not preclude the author from having a reason for including whatever parts of the biography -- that is, a reason beyond "this is what happened next." Indeed, that is greatly the difference between a poor biography and a good biography: the latter is building up a picture of something, usually (but not always) the person who is the subject of the biography. A poor biography merely proceeds from time period to place to time period to place simply because "that is what happened next." And that is how The Name of the Wind reads.
