Reviews

Rating this book precisely is challenging. The initial half felt repetitive and tedious, resembling the first book. Just as I considered abandoning it, the setting shifted, and the narrative gained momentum. The second half held elements I appreciated, wishing they had received more attention. Unfortunately, the initial portion nearly soured the entire experience, extending my reading time to two years due to my aversion to the university, his chronic financial dilema, and Denna being predominant early on.

clownmama's review against another edition

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3.0

I have to admit I feel I just wasted my time reading this, thank the Goddess I borrowed it from the library. Ultimately I feel this book went nowhere, other than endless circles of Kvothe being broke, Kvothe looking for Denna, Kvothe barely scraping by, Kvothe coming into some money spending it all and starting the circle again. Yeah I know he ends up monetarily comfortable by the end. And I have to agree with some others, but Denna seems a horrid character and I have no clue why Kvothe is so entranced. Sorry not much of a review, but he'll it wasn't much of a book.

beaktastic's review against another edition

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4.0

So, The Wise Man's Fear continues the story of Kvothe, also known as Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, Maedre, The Flame, and so on and so forth. You may have heard of him.

So, this book shakes up the setting a bit from the previous book, which is good. Initially Kvothe starts out still at the University where he spent the majority of the previous book, and it starts out with much more of the same. Kvothe struggling to make ends meet at the University and pay his tuition. Then before too long, things are shaken up a bit and Kvothe must leave the University for a while and he ends up travelling to Vintas to the court of a powerful nobleman, and from there his journey takes him to unexpected and amazing places.

I was glad that Rothfuss changed the setting up a bit as I was getting a little tired of the fact that Kvothe's adventures at the University, while interesting in the first book, were pretty much unchanged from that book ad featured a penniless Kvothe. It was nice to see some different places, including

Spoiler

Severan, Ademre and (!) the Fae!

All of these places were exciting and interesting, but at the same time I felt that while Kvothe was obviously learning and training during these adventures, not much was really happening and I was hoping to hear some more of the exciting stories, such as how he became Kvothe Kingkiller, something which will obviously be revealed in the next book. Nothing much happened with the Chandrian either, and since Rothfuss will hopefully build them up to some kind of final confrontation, time is running short for that too. But at the same time, Rothfuss doesn't necessarily follow the cliche path of storytelling and it may be that Kvothe won't really stop them or whatever. Although Rothfuss did include places with strange traditions and languages that Kvothe has to learn and overcome which is somewhat cliched for fantasy...

It was nice to see his relationship with Denna advance further and continue to develop, and since they've made no mention of Denna in the 'present' I'm interested in how this will end. It was also nice to see Kvothe building some relationships with other people, I particularly liked Tempi and Dedan.

Things are continuing to progress in the 'present' too as well as the 'past' and I'm interested to see how this will be tied up in the third book. Bast continues to be an interesting and mysterious character and I can't wait to learn more about him and his motivations.

It's also nice that at one point Kvothe and Bast make up a story to some of the locals at the Waystone about a legendary called Chronicler to make a point to the real Chronicler about how stories can be exaggerated and get carried away. It was amusing and an important segway.

Overall, it's a good book, but I felt that not much really happened in it and it seemed to lack some of the excitement of the first book. Whilst Kvothe's journeying and training etc. was obviously important it did mean this book lacked something from the first. Hopefully the third book will return to the fine form of the first with some of the more exciting stories to come!