#i mean this is very explicitly me coming for patrick rothfuss' entire life

[words-writ-in-starlight]

thank you so much omg Name of the Wind is SO FRUSTRATING, I tried reading it and just did NOT like the protagonist or the writing style or ANYTHING, and people KEEP RECOMMENDING IT TO ME

mhmhmhMHMHM you have come to the RIGHT PLACE

Okay, so first, a disclaimer: I read Name of the Wind four and a bit years ago and, despite my usually excellent memory for plots and characters, retained exactly jack and shit of the whole thing except for the arguments I wrote in my head about my frustration.  But like...I’ve been holding onto those for a long time, so just.  Sit tight and listen to me complain for a minute, I deserve this.

First and foremost, it’s pitched as this revolutionary take on...something, and if my life and the lives of everyone I love depended on it, I couldn’t tell you what it’s supposed to revolutionize.  It’s not even a particularly well-executed piece on Magic Has A Price, which is what I usually hear about (what with the very academic, scientific take on magic), the fucking early Dresden Files are better at that.  (Shit y’all, remember Toby Daye, the series I haven’t shut up about?  Magic Has A Price masterpiece right there.)  I mean, goddamn, @Patrick Rothfuss, I’m really sorry, but you’re never going to do Magic Is A Science better than Fullmetal Alchemist, which basically invented equivalent exchange, so just put that one to bed.  For actual revolutionary takes on various genres, I’d suggest Imperial Radch (scifi), The Wrath and the Dawn (fairy tale retelling), Stormdancer (steampunk/fantasy), Sunshine (paranormal urban), and Kencyrath Chronicles (epic fantasy).

Second, the main character is not likable.  There.  I said it.  I found Kvothe absolutely fucking insufferable in every way.  His “modern” self telling the story was, like, a little more tolerable, but for the majority of the novel he’s an arrogant twit too convinced of his own cleverness to drag his head out of his ass for long enough to actually get anything done.  It’s possible to do a very self-confident, clever character in a way that their arrogance is actually charming--King Arthur: Legend of the Sword comes to mind.  Shit, son, so does Roy Mustang, and half the other characters in FMA.  In books, I’d rec maybe Captive Prince (Laurent).  It’s important, if you’re doing that, to make sure that the character can actually put their money where their mouth is and do the thing they’re bragging about, or else make it a Learning Experience that sticks with them.  Kvothe ain’t that.  Kvothe is just completely baselessly sure that he’s going to be the best from the very beginning, despite evidence to the contrary, and I found it intolerably annoying.

Third, the universe is interesting, the magic is kind of a neat concept for all that it’s (from what I can tell) an Eragon bootleg, which is, of course, the child of LOTR and Star Wars almost exactly. But the writing style was like a fucking textbook.  I mean.  Goddamn.  Not exactly sweeping me away into the infinite Imagisphere with that.  And I’m not--my standards for evocative prose are not that high, the Animorphs books were written for thirteen-year-olds, but fuck me NotW was not remotely achieving it.  If you’re going to frontload that kind of technical jargon, you need to make it the point of the book, like The Martian, which is very up front about being a science ramble that enjoys what it’s doing, or else find a good balance like Sabriel, which is heavy on the technical angle of Abhorsen magic and glyphs and shit without sacrificing the characters.

Fourth, I dimly recall a girl who’s there for like a hot minute as a love interest?  I don’t think I remember any others?  So, you know...points off for that one.  It’s the 21st century.  Women, POC, the homosexual agenda, they should all be in there.  Thanks.

Fifth, the whole urban setup gets a lot of time and attention, but it’s just not...well done?  It’s just not.  It does not give a cohesive sense of place, nor an emotional connection to the people in that place.  Please, for the love of God, Jesus, and any other deities you want to throw in there, read the first book in the Kencyrath series, it is called God Stalk and it’s very good at this.  I’d also say Toby Daye, but that’s about a real place (San Francisco) rather than a fantasy setting, like NotW and God Stalk.

Sixth, and this is a writerly complaint, not an opinion, but: right, so, in the “modern” day when Kvothe is telling the story, some grand disaster is underway, right?  Am I making that up?  See, I’d never know if I was making it up, because it does not get a single goddamn mention in the main bulk of the novel.  That is a clear and evident sign that you need to critically reevaluate what part of the timeline is the main novel.  I’m not saying that your novel necessarily needs to be the worst day/month/week of your character’s life, but if you could have included the entire text of the novel in a page or two of emotionally laden dialogue or memories, you probably should have.  And don’t come at me with “Oh, Name of the Wind is the first in a series, things get underway later in the series” because if your FIRST BOOK does not grab me, I’m absolutely not giving you ANOTHER BOOK to get it done.  You want to set up some kind of heartwrenching Things Were Different Once arrangement?  Make me care about your characters and then drop bits of backstory as we go, or include a prologue, or get over your fear of flashbacks and use them judiciously. Crucially, give them a relationship to The Way Things Were and then use that relationship to make your reader upset for them.  Again, Toby Daye is a great example.  So is the Imperial Radch series by Anne Leckie.

Which brings me to seventh, which is that I am APPALLED that over the course of that entire goddamn book, there was not one single interpersonal relationship I ever came to give a damn about.  I think there was the girl, I think Kvothe might have had one (1) friend, I think there was a teacher?  And there was the kid Bast in the “modern” day, who I retained more of than literally anyone/anything else because he was the only person I gave a flying fuck about.  Again, I, the writer, am horrified about this, far more so than I, the reader.  The main thing that original content creators should take away from fanfic culture is that your readers will almost universally care more about the relationships between characters than anything else.  You are going to need a pretty balls-out crazy good universe and plot to smooth over a general lack of engaging relationships, and NotW just isn’t that good.  So, like, let that be a lesson.  I’m not recommending anything for this because this should be obvious.

EIGHTH, what...was the plot of the first book?  No, seriously, I was asking this when I finished it, too.  The only plot points I recall now are Kvothe deciding that he wanted to do The Magic, Kvothe conning his way into The School For The Magic (in, if I recall correctly, kind of a FMA ripoff?), something about a library for The Magic, a bunch of technical stuff about The Magic and Kvothe being an arrogant twit, and Kvothe getting whipped.  From what I remember, the entire book basically seemed to lead up to Kvothe getting whipped and ended shortly thereafter.  And, uh...how should I put this.  That’s.  Not a plot.  Again, that’s maybe a couple paragraphs of conversation between Kvothe and someone he cares about regarding the scars on his back, not an entire fucking novel.  Again, this should be obvious, I’m not recommending anything.

Anyway, TL;DR, NotW is ultimately a forgettable fantasy novel without anything in particular to distinguish it from a myriad of other unremarkably flawed fantasy novels, and I wouldn’t have any opinions on it whatsoever if people didn’t keep pitching it to me as the Second Coming of Tolkien, leGuin, McCaffrey, and fuck knows who else.  

A collection of the content I recommended here and why I recced them, plus some others:

Imperial Radch, Ann Leckie (unique scifi, excellent example of emotionally resonant flashbacks)

The Wrath and The Dawn, Renee Ahdieh (unique fairy tale retelling)

Stormdancer, Jay Kristoff (unique steampunk fantasy)

Sunshine, Robin McKinley (unique paranormal urban fantasy)

Kencyrath Chronicles, PC Hodgell (unique epic fantasy, well-executed fantasy cities and colleges)

Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa (magic with a price, scientific magic, charmingly arrogant characters) (manga or Brotherhood anime)

October Daye, Seanan McGuire (magic with a price, emotionally resonant memories/prologue, well-executed urban locale)

Captive Prince, CS Pacat (charmingly arrogant/engagingly arrogant characters, well-executed political scheming)

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, dir. Guy Ritchie (charmingly arrogant characters, concise worldbuilding)

The Martian, Andy Weir (technical frontloading without being unreadable)

Sabriel, Garth Nix (technical magic and worldbuilding without losing character engagement)

Source and Shield Series, Moira J. Moore (unique urban non-Earth fantasy, charmingly arrogant characters, emotionally resonant conversations about the past)

Temeraire Series, Naomi Novik (technical worldbuilding without being unreadable, having a fucking plot in each book even if your overall plot is extremely big-picture and doesn’t show up until later)

The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (unique folklore retelling/urban fantasy, charmingly arrogant characters, having some fucking diversity)