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A review by mmmlysaght
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Did not finish book.
For better and for worse, this book is classical fantasy embodied: enormously long and followed by two equally brick-like behemoths, staring a miraculously gifted but personally lackluster male main character pining after the beautiful and broken maiden, set against a mythology that promised more than it delivered in originality.
To be fair, I was hooked - for about the first 100 pages. And then the veil was drawn back to reveal that the mythology (the only thing I was truly interested in to begin with) was pretty much Jesus/LoTR crossover fic, and that nothing even as remotely interesting or thought provoking as the main character dying (even if it was threatened, much to my utter lack of surprise) was going to happen.
And then I did a foolish thing, and I read on.
I read every inconsequential and unoriginal thing that happened to the main character, often through his own asinine notions of personal grandeur, as well as every time Mr.Boring LeFey thoroughly vanquished the minuscule odds against him and crowed his own greatness like he built the heavens himself; if you're literally the best lute player in the whole of existence, you'll excuse me if I'm a little disdainful of your pride in utterly destroying the musical futures of, well, pretty much anyone.
So I stopped reading, and I instantly became a happier person sans the hours of my life I gave this bloodless mockery of storytelling.
Some pretty names and mystical titles for magic do not a complex and worthwhile read make, and being a main character does not entitle a boring man to 600 words of anyone's attention.
Pros:
- It's a book. If you like books, that's step one right there.
Cons:
- Unoriginal and excessively secretive treatment of mythology
- Christopher Paolini at 16 wrote a fantasy culture with probably more diversity and difference from dungeons and dragons medievalism than Rothfuss'
- Main character with Mary Sue levels of innate talent, animal magnetism, and self importance - also similar levels of 'literally anyone but the author of that Mary Sue caring'
- Glacial pacing, lackluster prose, cliches in literally every element of the story from the narrative frame to the metaphors
- I think my cat has more personality than the female "character"
To be fair, I was hooked - for about the first 100 pages. And then the veil was drawn back to reveal that the mythology (the only thing I was truly interested in to begin with) was pretty much Jesus/LoTR crossover fic, and that nothing even as remotely interesting or thought provoking as the main character dying (even if it was threatened, much to my utter lack of surprise) was going to happen.
And then I did a foolish thing, and I read on.
I read every inconsequential and unoriginal thing that happened to the main character, often through his own asinine notions of personal grandeur, as well as every time Mr.Boring LeFey thoroughly vanquished the minuscule odds against him and crowed his own greatness like he built the heavens himself; if you're literally the best lute player in the whole of existence, you'll excuse me if I'm a little disdainful of your pride in utterly destroying the musical futures of, well, pretty much anyone.
So I stopped reading, and I instantly became a happier person sans the hours of my life I gave this bloodless mockery of storytelling.
Some pretty names and mystical titles for magic do not a complex and worthwhile read make, and being a main character does not entitle a boring man to 600 words of anyone's attention.
Pros:
- It's a book. If you like books, that's step one right there.
Cons:
- Unoriginal and excessively secretive treatment of mythology
- Christopher Paolini at 16 wrote a fantasy culture with probably more diversity and difference from dungeons and dragons medievalism than Rothfuss'
- Main character with Mary Sue levels of innate talent, animal magnetism, and self importance - also similar levels of 'literally anyone but the author of that Mary Sue caring'
- Glacial pacing, lackluster prose, cliches in literally every element of the story from the narrative frame to the metaphors
- I think my cat has more personality than the female "character"