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kilroyPrint date: 2007 (20s: 1, 50s: 2, 60s: 4, 70s: 9, 80s: 8, 90s: 9, 00s: 25, 10s: 2)
Verdict: Get my own copy, probably on Kindle. (41/98)
I have to admit I was massively oversold on this one. Several people I trust told me that it was amazing, and then there was the whole thing with Penny Arcade. Unfortunately due to Sean's Law of Inverse Appreciation, the more people tell me something is great, the less likely I am to think it's great myself. I'll try and filter that out in the review, but I figured I'd give you fair warning.
This one's a rambler. At the beginning of the book I figured we'd have gotten through the history and started dealing with the problems in the present by the end. About two thirds of the way through the book I realized that the story probably wouldn't get past Kvothe's school years. By the actual end of the book we weren't even done with his first year at school. And by the epilogue we know that the series isn't going to be anything other than history at all, followed by the death of the main character. I was... a little disappointed.
Individual pages and chapters hold up fine, and the author at least tries to follow Chekhov's Law-- if it comes up in an earlier chapter, it will likely show up again later. The style is engaging and there were definitely points where I kept pushing to see what happened next. There are surprises and plot reversals, mistakes and betrayals. But when I take a step back and look at the book as a whole, I dearly want to prune it. I could knock 200 pages off this thing and still maintain all the necessary narrative threads. You can get away with this kind of expansiveness if your prose is sparkling, but Rothfuss is merely good. He's a craftsman, not a genius.
I feel much the same way about the characters. Kvothe never surprises me; he's straight off the Fantasy Protagonist Menu even if he is a bit overburdened by character traits. Denna is that scrappy, enigmatic girl you fall in love with as a teenager. I like both of them just fine, but neither one of them felt real enough for me to really care about them. The subsidiary characters are drawn from well-worn archetypes and the teachers at the University gave me disconcerting Harry Potter flashbacks. Pretty much the only two that stand out to me are Chronicler and Bast, and that's largely due to the first and last twenty pages of the book.
It's a good fantasy novel. It shows due deference to its forbears and a solid attention to craft. I'll happily read the rest of the series once it's done. But I'll look for my literary fireworks elsewhere.
Page count: 662 (21396 total)
Completed: 60 (27 female authors, 28 male authors, 5 anthology)
Rejected: 38 (23 male authors, 15 female authors)
Next book due: Friday, September 30th
Verdict: Get my own copy, probably on Kindle. (41/98)
I have to admit I was massively oversold on this one. Several people I trust told me that it was amazing, and then there was the whole thing with Penny Arcade. Unfortunately due to Sean's Law of Inverse Appreciation, the more people tell me something is great, the less likely I am to think it's great myself. I'll try and filter that out in the review, but I figured I'd give you fair warning.
This one's a rambler. At the beginning of the book I figured we'd have gotten through the history and started dealing with the problems in the present by the end. About two thirds of the way through the book I realized that the story probably wouldn't get past Kvothe's school years. By the actual end of the book we weren't even done with his first year at school. And by the epilogue we know that the series isn't going to be anything other than history at all, followed by the death of the main character. I was... a little disappointed.
Individual pages and chapters hold up fine, and the author at least tries to follow Chekhov's Law-- if it comes up in an earlier chapter, it will likely show up again later. The style is engaging and there were definitely points where I kept pushing to see what happened next. There are surprises and plot reversals, mistakes and betrayals. But when I take a step back and look at the book as a whole, I dearly want to prune it. I could knock 200 pages off this thing and still maintain all the necessary narrative threads. You can get away with this kind of expansiveness if your prose is sparkling, but Rothfuss is merely good. He's a craftsman, not a genius.
I feel much the same way about the characters. Kvothe never surprises me; he's straight off the Fantasy Protagonist Menu even if he is a bit overburdened by character traits. Denna is that scrappy, enigmatic girl you fall in love with as a teenager. I like both of them just fine, but neither one of them felt real enough for me to really care about them. The subsidiary characters are drawn from well-worn archetypes and the teachers at the University gave me disconcerting Harry Potter flashbacks. Pretty much the only two that stand out to me are Chronicler and Bast, and that's largely due to the first and last twenty pages of the book.
It's a good fantasy novel. It shows due deference to its forbears and a solid attention to craft. I'll happily read the rest of the series once it's done. But I'll look for my literary fireworks elsewhere.
Page count: 662 (21396 total)
Completed: 60 (27 female authors, 28 male authors, 5 anthology)
Rejected: 38 (23 male authors, 15 female authors)
Next book due: Friday, September 30th
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-03 02:14 pm (UTC)I will say that if you found this one to be rambly, you're going to roll your eyes a bit more at Wise Man's Fear. I loved it, but it definitely could have used a rather large red pen of doom from the editor.