This past week I finally read a book that has been on the shelves since 2007. The author, Patrick Rothfuss, graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, which I was also fortunate enough to attend for a time. My sister told me that he had been working hard on a fantasy book for years, but that he also wrote good articles for the university paper-- which I could confirm, having read some of them. While I survived about a decade without regular reading, a feat about as foolhardy and dangerous as ten days without food or sleep, the name of Rothfuss and his published work have been steadily nudging away at the back of my mind.
Screenshot from the author's website, here
The Name of the Wind follows a nonlinear plot, but it begins by sitting you down in an inn at night to listen to an old storyteller, Cob, tell four or five men part of a heroic legend of their world. The third-person omniscient narrator gives you a number of hints about secrets hidden by the innkeeper, Kote, and draws your attention to "a silence of three parts" surrounding him and his inn, the Waystone.
"The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn's sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter... of course, there was no music. ... Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there... The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. It was deep and wide as autumn's ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die."
After a few chapters in and around the Waystone, the story shifts away to a traveling scribe named Chronicler, who is robbed of his horse, shirt, and purse by a band of mercenaries. We are not left to wonder long about how his story will connect with Kote's. We learn both that Chronicler is an important man, and that Kote is willing to tell him the true story behind his own legend, provided he sit down immediately and record it over the span of three days. Kote admits that his true name is Kvothe, and begins his tale in a childhood of learning while traveling with his parents and their troupe of highly talented performers. The tale soon turns incredibly dark, but Kvothe describes how he managed to survive and to study at the University through many misadventures.
At the climax of the story-within-the-story, Kvothe finds himself "calling the name of the wind" inadvertently, causing injury and trouble and nearly getting himself expelled from the University, but at the same time, his talent is finally recognized by an elusive professor who decides at long last to teach him. At about the same time, Kvothe finds a secret way into the Archives he has longed to use for years, but was banned from early on due to a malicious trick.
At the climax of the present-day story, one of the mercenaries from the beginning appears at the Waystone and, apparently possessed by a demon, attacks the people within. One of the townspeople dies and another is the hero who incapacitates the mercenary. Kvothe's attempt to use magic against the mercenary proves useless.
In the conclusion, once the commotion is over, Kvothe retires for the night, while his assistant and student Bant confronts Chronicler to demand that over the next two days, he must guide Kvothe to reflect on his past heroism and triumph, and not let Kvothe dwell on failures. Bant says that we all constantly tell ourselves a story about who we are that makes us who we are, and that Kvothe has begun to believe he is no more than a weary innkeeper. Bant wants to have the old Kvothe back.
* * *
One of the things that stood out to me most in this story was that, for the most part, there is not a lot of explanation or exposition up front. You are not quite thrust into the middle of action or climax, but rather into what feels like the calm before a storm, and then fortuitously you can pick up clues about where you are and what might be going on through Kvothe's life story and the intervals back at the Waystone Inn.
Thanks to this narrative structure, you get hints about the world, its cultures, and religion, but the urgency of the plot is carried by Kvothe and his drive to survive and get into the University; to learn, among other things, why his parents were killed and who the enemies of their murderers are. The strongest and most foundational pieces of the story concern Kvothe's happy memories of his parents and mentor, his practice and mastery of the lute that connects him with his father, and his unpredictable relationship with the mysterious Denna. On the other hand, his antagonistic interactions with a young nobleman named Ambrose produce a number of circumstances that drive him along his path, and in telling the story, Kvothe always comments that he was a fool to underestimate the trouble Ambrose would cause him. This makes for some uncomfortable suspense and dread.
It is a slow burn of a story, and although Kvothe as a character is remarkably intelligent and clever, nothing is made easy for him. This can be frustrating, but it also makes for quite a payoff when Kvothe does succeed.
I would have liked a little more background about the world and for Kvothe to have discovered something more significant at the end of the story about his parents' killers. Before the end of the story, I would have liked to know what it meant for the characters that the mercenary came to the inn, instead of keeping it vague and mysterious.
The sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, was published in 2011. I will most definitely read it. I hope that since it is now 2018, the third (and final) installment in the series will be arriving soon.
Overall Score: 7.5/10
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