adventurous emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

this book really hasn’t aged well? the writing around poverty & music makes me feel like the author isn’t very familiar with the lived experiences of poor folk & musicians (“if you’ve never been xyz you wouldn’t understand” is said a lot) and it has a very j.j. abrams “mystery box” plot style. it prefers being totally unpredictable to having a flowing plot with foreshadowing and the like. many offhand phrases are repeated over and over again (take a shot every time “times being what they are” is said)

i don’t like school settings and i wasn’t really prepared for us to spend 75% of this book in a school, or to encounter quite so much patriarchy. another review says the protagonist is a mary sue and i very much agree.

there’s lots of different fictional races, which i presume is why people say this cast is diverse, but it’s more like there’s russians & jews, the french & italians, the british, and romani people. as a jew, i always feel off-put by kinds of oppression/microaggressions faced by some groups in here, and by the fact that there’s a ‘money race’ for lack of a better term.

at many points the book was a chore to get through, and i was disappointed by the lack of a clean ending. also, lots of grammar/spelling/math errors in my edition?

overall i won’t be recommending it to anyone myself, but it’s a genre staple and fun to talk about with friends. definitely check the content warnings area before embarking.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I loved this book a whole lot. A beautiful ode to storytelling, family, grief, and music, via a high fantasy narrative. The world building is wonderful. And the main character, Kvothe, is so beautifully and affectingly written. He felt so incredibly real to me, so much so that each time I opened the book it felt like checking in with an old friend. If you love high fantasy, definitely recommend.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark tense
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark emotional funny sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings