#17: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Finally, a book where the stakes are high and you're constantly seeking more satisfaction, even though every page feels fresh and crisp, no matter what part of the book you're reading. It's one of those books that doesn't have any good "stopping points". At first thought, you might wonder if it's a bad thing for a book not to have any adequate places to pause. But in my case, I wanted to keep on going, and see what happened next, even if the latest chapter had ended with a good temporary resolution, such as a small conflict getting resolved. One might consider this situation to be a good stopping point. You can finally say you're going to sleep or something of the sort. Although that was the path I took a number of times while reading this book, I was never quite satisfied with it. Every chapter left me wanting more. Every single one.

The peculiarity of "The Name of the Wind" is that you have that story within a story. Kote, an innkeeper who leads a seemingly peaceful life, agrees to tell his life story to a man who goes by the name of Chronicler, who has been asked to seek out stories such as Kote's. Kote agrees, but says that he will take three days, a sum which Chronicler finds ridiculous at first, considering that he usually takes one day at most to record the story of a very important man. But Kote insists that his story must take three days, and Chronicler finally complies. He soon finds, after all, that Kote's story is one that deserves to be listened to and narrated intricately and carefully.

"The Name of the Wind" is the first book in a trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicle, and it depicts the events of the first day Kote takes to tell his story, the first part of which encompasses his childhood up until he is about fifteen or sixteen years old. At that age, he was known as Kvothe, a brave and remarkably intelligent young boy who finds his strength of heart and mind tested after a horrible tragedy leaves him to fend for himself. The numerous hardships he experiences are narrated beautifully, but Rothfuss never lets us forget that, beneath the beauty of the tale Kvothe tells, lies the terrible fact that Kvothe is truly on his own, and is constantly on the edge of survival.

There are many aspects of this book that deserve applause, but one that I must point out immediately is that every detail seems to matter. I think that, as a writer, it can be very easy to write in seemingly interesting details and just leave them hanging there, not really attached to any particular person or event that could make them more than just snippets of information. I noticed, for example, how much detail Rothfuss used to describe Kvothe's relationship with music, especially with the lute. Each tiny incident involving music, especially a lute, added to the overall narrative and the interactions Kvothe had with other characters. It changed his mindset and the way he thought of himself and others. The making and breaking of this music drove even more twists into a very rich plot.

I must also commend Patrick Rothfuss for making a very thick book feel incredibly light. The book is over 600 pages long, (whether you get the book in a larger or smaller format) yet the narrative feels continuously fresh and enthralling. You're never left wondering when the author is going to "cut to the chase" or "get the book over with already". Instead, each page draws you in more than the last, and by the end of the book, you're left wanting so much more, it's highly tempting to get to the nearest library or bookstore as fast as possible in order to procure the second book.

"The Name of the Wind" is now one of my favorite books. I give it a ten out of ten for narration, description, character development and satisfaction in both the literary and emotional senses. Patrick Rothfuss is a true genius, and I can't wait to pick up the second book in The Kingkiller Chronicle.





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The Name of the Wind Book Review by Courtney Justus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.