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A review by vegantrav
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
4.0
The Wise Man's Fear is the sequel to The Name of the Wind. While I absolutely loved the latter, the former was not quite as good though it was still a very good read.
My main quibble with The Wise Man's Fear is that it meanders a bit too much, especially the long sections where Kvothe is hunting the highway robbers in the Eld, his time with Felurian, and his time in Ademre. This is not to say that I disliked these episodes, for there are some great stories of magic and adventure in these sections--just that these sections could have used some tightening.
In fact, weighing in at 993 pages and 300 pages longer than the first novel, The Wise Man's Fear, as a whole, is bloated. But despite the length, I was continually propelled forward by Rothfuss's wonderful ability to spin out, within the larger narrative, smaller stories that have their own intrinsic interest while contributing to the overall plot. Rothfuss has a wonderful talent for getting Kvothe, time and time again, into and out of trouble in surprising and entertaining fashion.
By the end of The Wise Man's Fear, we are not all that much more enlightened about Kvothe than we were at the end of The Name of the Wind. Granted, we have learned more about Kvothe and how he began to acquire his reputation as a legendary magician, but only just the barest outlines of that story; we are only one year farther along in Kvothe's career as a student at the University, so we've grown to know him a little better, but much remains to be revealed. We are still in the dark about the Chandrian and Kvothe's efforts to track them down; we still don't know the details of how Kvothe earned the moniker, The Kingkiller; we still don't know why and how Kvothe has become an innkeeper living incognito in a small rural village; we still don't exactly who Bast is and how he came to be with Kvothe; and now we have a new mystery about the Amyr.
So, The Wise Man's Fear leaves many questions unanswered, and for this reason, I will definitely be reading the last novel in this trilogy once it comes out. In seeking to fill the void left by the Harry Potter novels, I have found no other series that comes as close to proving itself a worthy successor to Rowling's genius as does the story of Kvothe. I can hardly wait for the final installment in The Kingkiller Chronicles to be published.
My main quibble with The Wise Man's Fear is that it meanders a bit too much, especially the long sections where Kvothe is hunting the highway robbers in the Eld, his time with Felurian, and his time in Ademre. This is not to say that I disliked these episodes, for there are some great stories of magic and adventure in these sections--just that these sections could have used some tightening.
In fact, weighing in at 993 pages and 300 pages longer than the first novel, The Wise Man's Fear, as a whole, is bloated. But despite the length, I was continually propelled forward by Rothfuss's wonderful ability to spin out, within the larger narrative, smaller stories that have their own intrinsic interest while contributing to the overall plot. Rothfuss has a wonderful talent for getting Kvothe, time and time again, into and out of trouble in surprising and entertaining fashion.
By the end of The Wise Man's Fear, we are not all that much more enlightened about Kvothe than we were at the end of The Name of the Wind. Granted, we have learned more about Kvothe and how he began to acquire his reputation as a legendary magician, but only just the barest outlines of that story; we are only one year farther along in Kvothe's career as a student at the University, so we've grown to know him a little better, but much remains to be revealed. We are still in the dark about the Chandrian and Kvothe's efforts to track them down; we still don't know the details of how Kvothe earned the moniker, The Kingkiller; we still don't know why and how Kvothe has become an innkeeper living incognito in a small rural village; we still don't exactly who Bast is and how he came to be with Kvothe; and now we have a new mystery about the Amyr.
So, The Wise Man's Fear leaves many questions unanswered, and for this reason, I will definitely be reading the last novel in this trilogy once it comes out. In seeking to fill the void left by the Harry Potter novels, I have found no other series that comes as close to proving itself a worthy successor to Rowling's genius as does the story of Kvothe. I can hardly wait for the final installment in The Kingkiller Chronicles to be published.