I recently finished reading The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Here’s the Onion review that made me decide to pick it up.
Has anyone else read this? What did you think?
I greatly enjoyed it but of course felt robbed when the story ended about a third of the way (or less) through (here’s hoping it doesn’t take the author another 10 years to create the next installment).
How did you feel about Kvothe? As the central character and narrator of his own flashback story, he’s pretty off-putting. It doesn’t make the story any less engaging or interesting, it’s just that he’s so very arrogant, and gets his arrogance justified at about every turn. Even his mistakes (as much as we see of them) tend to be due to others misunderstanding him, rather than real lapses of judgment on his part (other than the candle-in-the-tomes incident).
I enjoyed it and thought it was solid, but didn’t quite see what The Onion was so raving about. As evidence of that, I’ve now mostly forgotten what happened in it 
I like it a lot and have been saying it is a story teller’s story. I like the writing style immensely. As mentioned, the only disappointment is that it is book 1 of 3. And I hate waiting!
The link doesn’t work for me BTW.
Woops, I screwed up that link but good. Here’s a fixed version:
I’d agree that it’s a storyteller’s story. Storytellers must tell their stories in their own way, in their own time, and put up with interruptions from their audience and the real world. I liked how Kvothe’s huge story was mirrored occasionally by Cob attempting to tell his buddies local folktales, which sometimes reflected events in Kvothe’s life. That was neat.
I also enjoyed how occasionally the author would set up an expectation on the reader’s part only to have Kvothe directly address and dismiss it. To the effect of, “Why didn’t I do XYZ? Because I’m not some character in a story; I’m a human being. Stories make everything neat and tidy, but real life is messy.”
And one small thing but something that really delighted me was that the dragon was vegetarian. Makes sense at a biological level and is the first time I’ve seen a non-meat-eating dragon in a story.