Book Review: "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

Warning: Possible spoilers.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is a book I have been meaning to read for quite some time - and been very excited about reading. Having had it recommended to me by various people and sources, I have finally got around to reading it.

The main bulk of the plot of The Name of the Wind is told through a story within the novel: the main character, Kvothe, tells it to a man named Chronicler, who has sought him in order to collect his story. Kvothe is a legendary figure within his own world, and his recounting of his life explains how he came to be considered so (though within The Name of the Wind, we only hear part of the story - the rest being in the next two books in the trilogy).

I fully expected to be blown away by The Name of the Wind, after all that I had heard of the novel before I began reading, and certain elements of it did make me sit up and take notice. The bookend-like prologue and epilogue, for example, were both beautifully written and in general this was true for all the third-person segments of the novel - the framing story was intriguing and I hope that we'll see more of it in the other two books in the trilogy. I'm also a huge sucker for unconventional narrative structures in novels, and so the story-within-a-story-with-occasional-stories-within-that greatly appealed to me. I also loved the intensity of the writing in certain scenes - such as the scene between Bast and Chronicler near the end of the novel and the fire in the Fishery.

However, as well as these elements, which I enjoyed, I also found that I had some niggling problems with The Name of the Wind, the majority of which were simple proofing errors. In one, Kilvin calls Kvothe "E'lir", even though Kvothe has yet to become an E'lir (and does so in the following scene), and in another, the character of Ambrose is introduced and called by his name in the narrative, even though his name has not yet been given to the reader. I found both these errors jarring and found that they brought me out of the book somewhat. I wondered if perhaps some were intentional - Kvothe is telling the story of his own life and might therefore slip on some details, as anyone does when telling a story.

In general I found that some characters were well-detailed and others were not given as much attention. Obviously the character of Kvothe is explored closely, and the character of Denna is given more attention than most, though much of her is left enigmatic (presumably for the purposes of plot in later books). Aside from these two, other characters appear woefully sparse. Bast, for example, was a character I found interesting right from the start of the novel, and while he gets some development (nearer to the end), he is generally left aside. Similarly, I would have liked to see more development for some of Kvothe's friends at the University.

I found Kvothe to be excessively arrogant for much of my reading. His boasting while telling his story might have some grounds for justification, as he is admittedly brilliant (often through necessity), but the wording used to express this was generally extremely cocky and made me less inclined to like Kvothe as a character. I was also put off Denna's character, because while Kvothe describes her as being extremely beautiful and wonderful all the time, her actions within the novel are generally not very pleasant (for example, despite being very obviously aware of Kvothe's feelings for her, she continues to parade various of her suitors before him). I found that the only point at which I liked Denna was after she had eaten some of the denner resin and worried that she would become addicted to it or die, because I felt that she was acting far more human than she had before.

While reading The Name of the Wind, I spoke with a friend of mine who had read it before. He explained that he thoroughly disliked the novel, and directed me towards an essay about why Kvothe is a Mary Sue. While I will not discuss my thoughts on this essay here (should I decide to write about it I shall make a separate blog post), I will say that while I do agree that Kvothe displays many Mary Sue-ish traits within the novel, he also has some cases of serious stupidity (for example, jumping off the roof at Elodin's suggestion). A small part of me wonders (and hopes) that Kvothe might be an unreliable narrator, and editing parts of his own story to make himself sound more heroic or brave.

 

While some of my expectations fell a little short, I also found many parts of The Name of the Wind incredibly interesting. The mythology within the novel feels rich and well-developed, while not being given away too fast. Secrets within the mythology feel as though they wait in the wings to be revealed later on. As mentioned above, I love seeing stories-within-stories and the power of storytelling within the novel is something I think Rothfuss has pulled off with considerable style.

 

Overall, I think that while The Name of the Wind did not blow me away entirely and leave me speechless, I still very much enjoyed reading it. The language is rich and flows well, and despite some problems I had with characterisation, I think the ideas were interesting. I will read The Wise Man's Fear at some point in the (hopefully near) future and hope that Kvothe finally encounters some real difficulties.

 

Have you read The Name of the Wind? What did you think of it? What did you make of Kvothe and Denna?

 

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