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Several years had passed since I last encountered a new enjoyable fantasy world. Months were spent listlessly turning pages with glazed over eyes. I started The Dresden Files series, but those books amounted to a serialized soap opera rather than a heart-stopping set of adventures about a wizard detective. Mistborn was more to my liking with amazing worldbuilding but I lacked a decent connection to the characters. The Lies of Locke Lamora promised an engaging start to the Gentleman Bastards series but then the sequel nosedived off the literary cliff. I couldn’t even get through two chapters of the Wheel of Time series. There were others so dull that I can’t for the life of me remember the title, and I won’t strain too hard to remember in case I end up subliminally foisting them onto you.
Mishap after mishap pushed me back into the arms of familiar authors and their worlds. I went back to rereading books from Red Rising. Afterwards, I proceeded with a reread of every single book and short story from Joe Abercrombie’s First Law world. I was getting tired of experimenting and getting let down, so I remained in my realm of comfort vetted by personal experience.
It was my good friend, Sam Korsky, that prodded me back on to the path of reading something new. He told me that the two released books of The Kingkiller Chronicle were his favorite pieces of fiction. I decided to put my faith in Sam and give them a read…
The books were phenomenal.
It was like jumping into a clear spring pool on a bright summer day. It was the childlike joy of stepping through a waterfall to explore a tucked-away cavern and finding an untouched part of the world. A world unknown yet inviting, lit by the soft glimmer of fireflies and glowing moss.
It was like stumbling into the last bar of the night and stopping dead in your tracks. Your entire body immobilized by an unknown song; the chords nostalgic and familiar, the voice drawing out emotions that constrict your throat, the words bringing tears to your eyes. The tears are not of joy or sorrow, but from feeling something pure. Something truly beautiful.
Patrick Rothfuss builds out a beautiful and detailed new world, but guides the reader into it carefully without overwhelming them with names of new places and people.The majority of the books is told from the first person as the main character, Kvothe, recounts the story of his life to the Chronicler. Kvothe wears many hats in the series: a trooper, a musician, a beggar, an arcanist, an advisor to kings, a lover, and a warrior. Those are just his early years with greater deeds hinted at to come in the third book.
If I allow myself to give out even the slightest demerit, it is for the lack of truly dynamic characters outside of Kvothe. Those who disagree would point out that the majority of the story is written from the first person perspective as he narrates his life to Chronicler. This also lets the books off the hook for Kvothe’s unrealistic overachieving in so many different areas: music, linguistics, sympathy, naming, and courting are just a few things he apparently masters by the ripe age of sixteen. There are times when I wish certain characters had more depth rather than be painted in broad brush strokes as good or evil. Alas, we find that Kvothe often makes immediate and harsh judgements of those around him and also is a masterful storyteller known for embellishing many of his own good traits.
Patrick Rothfuss had two options when writing his novels. He could either write a realistically flawed narrator which would then lead to an (at times) unrealistic recollection of Kvothe’s story. Or, he could write an unrealistic narrator to weave together a more realistic storyline. After having read so many types of the latter, I am ultimately happy with the direction this book went with.
The last thing I think everyone ought to be aware of is that this series is unfinished. There is a decent chance the series will never be finished, and all that would remain of this world would be two books and a few novellas. That would be a tragedy. However, I have since come around to the perspective that I would be satisfied with the trilogy remaining unfinished. In A Wise Man’s Fear, the second installment, Kvothe recounts a story his father told him when he was a small child. The story was nonsensical, but his father spurred him to try to find a meaning in the story, which Kvothe spent days thinking about. When asked if he was frustrated, Kvothe had this to say:
“It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers… That way, when he finds the answers, they’ll be precious to him. The harder the questions, the harder we hunt. The harder we hunt, the more we learn. An impossible question...”
The first two books are littered with unanswered questions. On my second reading, I was left with even more questions than newly found answers. I have spent countless hours discussing different theories about mysteries in the books with my friends. I have spent more time thinking about this series than almost any other just trying to put the pieces together.
Learning how Patrick Rothfuss sees the puzzle fit together would be amazing. Given that I am but an impotent observer of the world he created, I’m sure his puzzle solution fits pieces together more snuggly than anything his fans can come up with, as he apparently had the entirety of the trilogy sketched out before publishing the first book.
If you refuse to start any unfinished series, that is your prerogative. All I can say is that you are missing out on a masterpiece. To the others who take pleasure in immersing themselves in a masterpiece of a fictional world or watching a beautifully played game, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.