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http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/206040779
Thoughts?
Bear with me. This is quite long........
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The first book was a fun read that, while flawed in terms of story and character, was quite entertaining and extraordinarily well written. It was like the ramblings of an old man, talking simply to be listened to. Like cake, it tastes good but has little nutritional value in it.
He never elaborates on what elements he thinks are flawed.....
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So let’s take a look at The Wise Man’s Fear. Or, as I like to call it: The Name of the Wind 2: Kvothe Gets Laid.
Yeah, too much of the story revolved around sex. It was over the top.
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At first I didn’t get the whole silence in three parts thing, but then I realized the writer was trying to be clever and failing miserably at it.
This guy can shove that up his ass. The prologues and epilogues from the series are some of the most beautiful, poetic paragraphs I've ever read.
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An acquaintance conveniently knows of a rich and powerful nobleman in a distant land that is looking for a clever young musician to help him win the heart of the lady he has his eye on. Fortunately, Kvothe happens to be a clever young musician. Convenient...
Hmmm, well that is how people get jobs. An employer wants something, and you can provide it.....not sure what his beef is there.
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To make an extremely long story short, he foils an assassination plot, gains the nobleman’s trust, and helps him woo his Lady. In a completely pointless tangent he’s sent on a mission to bring bandits to justice, loses himself on a tangent from the tangent when he meets a seductress who teaches him how to please women. Then the tangent from the tangent takes another tangent to another distant land where he learns to tangent from a group of tangentary tangents, but is tangented by yet another tangent after leaving when he tangents upon some young tangents in need of being tangentially tangented away from--wait, what as I talking about again? Oh right, I'm reviewing a book. One could say that the entire last half of the book is just one gigantic tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with anything, and ultimately leads nowhere.
Again, not sure what the huge beef is here. Kvothe going after the bandits is a huge part of his growth into a man and a warrior. He learns (or at least begins learning) how to be the badass fighter that he is from the Adem. The trilogy isn't meant to be a quick, pointed narrative. It's a hero and a legend telling his own story.
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So good in fact, that most people don't even realize what a god-awful mess every other aspect of the book is. Despite all the *****ing I do about this book, it was worth reading at least once for the humor, or to see the train wreck for yourself.
This paragraph confirms my initial gut feeling that this guy is a dickbag.
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There’s no conflict, there’s no suspense, there’s nothing like a normal story arch. There is no climax because the book doesn’t build up to anything. Like I said, Patrick Rothfuss has great ideas, but no storytelling skills to apply them to. The whole narrative is incoherent and nonsensical.
I guess assassination plots, hunting bandits, etc. don't qualify as "conflict" to this guy. He's right in that there isn't a huge conflict at the end of the book; no cliff hanger or anything of the like. But every book in a series doesn't have to have that. Even without a huge moment at the end of WMF, I am absolutely still hooked on the story. Rothfuss may take a while to come to the point, but to say he has no storytelling skills is just intellectually dishonest.
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The frequent interruptions back to the present day where Kvothe discusses aspects of his story are annoying and hugely distracting, breaking up whatever little suspense that the writer managed to cultivate.
Sometimes I was annoyed by going back to the present time frame. But only because I was so engrossed in the story. There is plenty to whet your appetite on in the present, namely exactly how screwed up is Kvothe and how did it happen?
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However, some of my favorite books are written in first person. It can be done well, and for the most part Rothfuss does good things with it, but when he moves to the parts of the book that happen in the present day he switches to third person and the contrast is jarring and almost as distracting as the actual interruptions themselves. Especially because he does not seem to be as talented in writing third person as he is at writing first person.
No. Just no.
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Rothfuss goes out of his way to shoehorn the title of the book into the story in several places and it's really distracting. It was like he came up with a great sounding title, and then completely drew a blank on why the book should be called that, then dropped a couple references in after the fact. He also seems to think his readers are idiots and frequently talks down to them.
Dafuq?
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The ugly? Lots and lots of sex. There are so many sex scenes in this book that I started to wonder if it shouldn’t have had a shirtless, ripped, long-haired dude on the cover and a title more like Warrior of Passion, or some such nonsense from the porn—er, I mean Romance—section of the bookstore. Everywhere Kvothe goes, there’s some chick that wants to lay him. I wonder what his secret is… Must be the Axe body spray. In real life, no man has women throwing themselves at him to jump his bones simply because he's the main character in the story of his own life. Especially not sixteen year olds who are often thought to be younger than that by appearance. That's called pedophilia, and most people tend to see that as very WRONG. News flash, women don't typically think or act like that. If I were a girl reading this book I think I'd find myself highly offended by this. It's almost as though he's the bearer of the One Wang. Yes, the fabled One Wang of Power. The One Wang to rule them all. The One Wang to find them. The One Wang to bring them all, and in the darkness... well, you know.
Agree with this.
Then he goes on a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG rant about Denna. And I agree almost completely with everything he says. Not necessarily with the vehemence with which he says them, though. I really do not like Denna. She's annoying as hell and I don't give a crap about her character. Their whole 'love story' sucks. It just really sucks. This sums it up:
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A love story has to develop and always be moving. Whether it be forward or backward, it must always be going SOMEWHERE. The characters have to get to know each other and fall in love through mutual experiences and differences, not randomly meet here and there and have a boring conversation with a convenience that stretches credulity and coincidence alike. The supposed relationship between Kvothe and Denna goes exactly NOWHERE, and it leaves you wondering why the author keeps trying to tell us that there is even a so-called love story between these two characters at all in the first place. There has to be some sort of progress made. You can’t throw two good looking people together that have no reason to fall in love with each other and call it a love story. There is nothing about this love story that is a.) even a love story and b.) the slightest bit interesting.
And now his finale....
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The characters did not learn, grow or progress at all, and it ends as it begins, with Kvothe in school, dealing with the same problems he was dealing with in the beginning. He hasn't taken anything away from his misadventures. He hasn't learned any lessons. He's the same character he was at the beginning. There’s a great story in here somewhere, the author keeps hinting at great events to come, but he never takes any steps closer to them. It’s the best book about absolutely nothing that you’ll ever read.
I completely disagree. Yes, Kvothe ends up back at school with the same enemies he had before. But, now he's no longer absolutely crippled by poverty, and more importantly, he's been trained to be a badass by the Adem. They even gave him one of their coveted SWORDS. HE HAS A SWORD. AND A MAGIC INVISIBILITY CLOAK. Seriously, the growth of Kvothe in this book is very obvious. He goes from a kid who's crazy smart, a badass on the lute, and knows some magic to a man (though age-wise he's still somewhat of a kid) who's crazy smart, a badass on the lute, knows some magic, has a benefactor, has done some badass magic, has survived a fae encounter that no one survives, has been trained in combat by the Adem (who don't train outsiders. ever.), and knows more about the Chandrian than he did at the start of the series.
I understand the frustration with very little of the questions the reader has from the first book being answered, but to say the book sucks because none of them were answered is stupid. Just like GRRM's Feast for Crows, WMF is laying the groundwork for a spectacular sequel (and finale). Even then, I didn't like Feast for Crows as a standalone book, but I really enjoyed WMF on its own.
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I have never read a book so vacuous, vapid, pretentious, and up its own ass as The Wise Man's Fear.
Oh look he's using big words to convince us of his intelligence.
And after he finishes a veeeery long and drawn out, somewhat disingenuous critique in which he all but calls Rothfuss' work a steaming pile of dog ****, he ends with:
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There's no reason we can't disagree and still be civil and respectful towards one another.
[This message has been edited by mid90 (edited 4/18/2014 1:35a).]
[This message has been edited by mid90 (edited 4/18/2014 1:42a).]