I greatly enjoyed Patrick Rothfuss' first novel, The Name of the Wind. It featured a highly developed world, a well-thought-out and interesting magic system, a plot like a Thoroughbred racehorse, and a clever, engaging main character (if slightly Mary Sue*) in the form of Kvothe. The writing was gamy but altogether taut, with little frippery or choppy sentences. Best of all, it fit together like a clever puzzle: every word, every action, every tiny detail was like a stone thrown into a river, whose ripples caused a tsunami at its other end.
The Wise Man's Fear features what at first glance appears to be the same cast of characters, the same settings (with a few added in), the same clever tricks. But the first thing that struck me was the writing. The sentences are stilted and chunky, and not even, in some cases, fully formed- and not in an artistic manner, but in the sense of someone who doesn't know how to formulate a complete sentence ("The night was dark. Like a cave"). Similarly, even the sentences that are complete are lackluster, the metaphors and similes hackneyed (which is deadly for characterization, considering that Kvothe is supposed to have written songs that make the minstrels weep." They made me weep, but for a different reason than I think the author intended. Form has completely fallen to function, fulfilling the worst stereotypes of fantasy, and while it is still a capable carrier for the plot, its is no longer a streamlined carriage, but a humpy buckwagon.
And the plot is no longer a Thoroughbred, but something far less fleet and prone to long dalliance where the rider (reader?) is thrown and the steed stops a while to crop grass and pontificate. Where in The Name of the Wind there was never a dull moment, The Wise Man's Fear bears all the hallmarks of a blocked writer struggling to live up to his own length and deadline (see: George R. R. Martin). It also reads like the book's editor didn't have nearly as much time as he or she wanted, because I could stand to see the book lose a couple hundred pages, such as the dalliances with Denna: once sweet, but now boring and cloying. Also the longwinded, tiresome descriptions of paging uselessly through books in the library. This wasn't exciting for Kvothe; why would Rothfuss assume it would be interesting to the reader?
Now, after unleashing the venom on my tongue, what's good? The introduction of new, non-University environs was welcome, especially the foreign, interesting political system of Vintas and the seductive, alluring glimpses of Faery. The Cthaeh was suitably chilling, and the advent of Kvothe's real, Taborlin the Great-type magic was highly exciting. But all these moments lacked a sense of purpose, as though Rothfuss weren't slowly revealing more pieces of the puzzle that is Kvothe but simply filling in the blanks of the abstract we were given at the beginning of his narrative: "learned name of wind: check. Spent night w/Felurian and stayed sane: check."
I did greatly enjoy Kvothe's time with the Adem, and it was refreshing to see him try his hand at something he wasn't actually automatically good at. It was also fun (and necessary) to see him get some humility knocked into him, and recognize that he's not the best at everything just because he can kick the shit out of spoiled lordlings whenever he wants to. It's also a necessary step towards minimizing his Mary Sue content.
Altogether, however, the book- well, it was not quite lackluster, per se, but it had a good deal less of the luster of the first. It's sort of a Wizard-of-Oz reveal for me: the man behind the curtain is revealed as just a man, and this is just a fantasy book. I guess I'm just disappointed because I was hoping it'd be, you know, a new epic or something.
*Mary Sue: fanfic word for a character who is often a stand-in for the author, but is always well above average in practically any category. Frequently characterized as precocious, the best in everything (at such a young age!), and, worst of all, perfect as so few (if any) people are.
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