I've just finished Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind, and immediately went to the bookstore and purchased the second book in the series, The Wise Man's Fear, which I think should indicate that enjoyed the book.
The Name of the Wind is the story of Kvothe, a legendary hero who disappeared, going into hiding or maybe just retirement as Kote, the simple innkeeper. He is tracked down by a world-famous author who is mostly known by his epithet, Chronicler. After some strange, supernatural events in Kvothe's small adopted town, Chronicler identifies Kvothe for who he is and persuades him to tell his life's story.
The Name of the Wind consists, then, primarily, of the first day Kvothe spends dictating his memoirs. We learn about his childhood, growing up with his family and their troupe of actors, and his early lessons in the magic known as "sympathy." Like most good heroes, Kvothe's call to adventure is a tragic trauma, and one that sets Kvothe on the path to revenge against some of the most dreaded figures in the world's legends - the mythical Chandrian.
The narrative takes us from his days as a beggar in a cruelly indifferent city to his early years at the University, and it is this academic setting that makes up the meat of the story. The Name of the Wind will inevitably draw comparisons to Harry Potter, as both stories concern a magically-gifted orphan who attends a wizarding school.
But the University in the Name of the Wind feels a lot more college than high school. Indeed, the major threats to Kvothe's goals tend to be less the sort of life-endangering magical kind, and more the all-too-real financial kind. If anything, Kvothe's main struggle is just to keep his head above water and pay his tuition, not to mention the interest owed to the loan-shark he borrowed from.
But the financial struggles of a student who had only just ceased being a beggar might be considered secondary to his difficulties with a troubled woman named Denna. Kvothe's affection for Denna is no secret, nor is hers for him (though true to any young man, Kvothe constantly second-guesses her signals, even when she's being practically explicit,) but the realities - both of an inexperienced young man dealing with his first romance, and also that two people feeling great affection for each other does not a healthy relationship make - are never cheated away.
Despite being set in a fantastical world, Kvothe's experiences at the University feel totally modern (give or take a few lashings.)
Kvothe manages to be an "ace" protagonist without it ever feeling like a cheat. The universe is so aligned against him (one key factor in this is that he finds himself in a pride-induced feud with a fellow student with far greater influence and wealth) that it would be impossible for the story to proceed if not for his incredible talent and cleverness. And after all, we wouldn't be hearing about this guy unless he was special. Plus, the narrative subverts expectations as often as it meets them.
If there is one major criticism I have to level against the book, despite enjoying it greatly, it is that it is somewhat tantalizing, offering a tiny glimpse of a large world, yet keeping us confined to a rather small part of it. To compare it with another famous contemporary fantasy series, this is almost like the opposite of A Song of Ice and Fire, in that it focuses in intently on a single protagonist and his personal struggles, while leaving the world's politics and greater motions nebulous. There are of course some advantages to this - the story never threatens to veer off down a rabbit hole of plots that only hint at some relevance to the main storyline (I'm looking at you, Quentyn Martell,) and allows us to delve deep into Kvothe and the people around him instead of expecting us to memorize a million different character names.
Yet the series also promises that Kvothe will be instrumental in that world's history. The series, which is expected to be a trilogy, is called the Kingkiller Chronicle. It doesn't take a very large logical leap to figure that Kvothe probably killed a king at some point, but which king that is, and of what domain, we don't really know after finishing book one.
I suppose the only reason that this bothers me is because of the conceit of the story - that Kvothe is now an older man (though probably not very old - I'd guess 30s) and is looking back on all of this as the sole person with the perspective to know what was going on in the legendary hero's mind - suggests that we should be at least sketchily aware of why people write songs and tell half-accurate stories about this man. Because we don't know exactly what he's famous for, the revelations of his actual past, as he remembers it, are perhaps less shocking.
Nevertheless, lest I allow this one quibble to sour my endorsement of the book, I should say that the story is vital, well-observed and feels deeply personal. I expect I'll have to let it marinate in my brain for a bit while I decide just where I'd rank it in the canon of contemporary fantasy fiction (though that process will have to wait a bit, as I'm reading volume two now,) but I'm going to say probably high.
