[Review] The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Price: € 7,31
Page count: 662
Language: English

Contents

'I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. My name is Kvothe. You may have heard of me' 
(Blurb of 'The Name of the Wind')

 

My opinion

I usually don't use the blurps of books to summarize them but I just can't find any better words as the blurp is as fantastically written as this whole book.

But let's start at the beginning.

'The Name of the Wind' is the first book in the Kingkiller Chronicle which is a fantasy trilogy. The protagonist Kvothe is orphaned at a very young age and has to take care of himself from then on. We accompany him as he tries to survive and then on his way to become a student at the University of magic.
Recently I have been getting back into fantasy again after a long time staying away from it and after the Mistborn series I thought it was hard to do any better.

I was wrong.

Patrick Rothfuss' writing style is incredibly beautiful and I just didn't want to put the book down. It was not the same feeling as when a book is super exciting, I just felt so good reading this book that I didn't want it to end.

The protagonist Kvothe is really likeable although he is a special case of a jack-of-all-trades.
Not only is he very intelligent, quick to pick up knowledge and extremely good-looking (so extremely good-looking that at the age of 15 he is able to impress women some years older than him) but he is also an expert in singing and playing the lute!

I can definitely understand that authors want their protagonists to be able to beat everyone because they love them. But it would definitely have made the book even more exciting if one didn't know that Kvothe would succeed in the end.

But aside from that I found that Rothfuss can create unique characters with strenghts and weaknesses that made me laugh or want to jump at them in anger.

I really liked reading about Kvothe's adventures and I'm really looking forward to read more about the Chandrian, what they are and how they can be fought. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed that I didn't learn more about them in the first book.
In addition to that I missed some more information about the world that Kvothe lives in, about the different peoples and also a bit about the history.

But now I'm really excited to read the second book in the series (which has more than 900 pages so it will have to wait for a bit) and the Kingkiller Chronicle seems like a must-read in the fantasy genre!

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