K-SCORE: 99
Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Spoiler Level: Minor
“It was as if Rothfuss read my review for that book before he wrote this one, agreed with most of my points, and took important steps to polish away those little imperfections.”
A wise man fears three things: a moonless night, a storm on the sea, and the fury of a gentle man.
Pat Rothfuss has convinced me these are, indeed, the things a wise man fears, and I pride myself on my wisdom. After finishing the second entry into his Kingkiller Chronicle, I closed the book and held it to my chest, sitting in such a way that I would feel the weight of it, pondering its contents in silence. The Wise Man’s Fear is too short at eleven-hundred and seven glorious pages of content. Much of my praise is just carried-over love for The Name of the Wind, but as Rothfuss has improved, my insight into the series has expanded.
“Every time I glanced at the page number, I was a little bit sad because for all its density, the novel is finite.”
What’s the most important thing to write? He had me. I was bound to this series with the first one, and Rothfuss is too clever, too careful, and too much a champion of his own work to take a desperate wrong turn with the second. So I was captivated, entertained, and enamored with the second part of the story of Kvothe right from the start. Every time I glanced at the page number, I was a little bit sad because for all its density, the novel is finite. I can’t live in that world forever. And now my time with Kvothe is over until he manages to crank out another stack of papery brilliance.
The crazy thing with The Wise Man’s Fear is that it improves upon The Name of the Wind in almost all of the ways that I thought it could. It was as if Rothfuss read my review for that book before he wrote this one, agreed with most of my points, and took important steps to polish away those little imperfections. The finished product in his second epic is tremendously satisfying. Kvothe is still a genuine storybook hero who is good at nearly everything, but Rothfuss managed to find a very real, relatable, and compelling set of weaknesses for him. Kvothe’s story speaks of triumphs that bring about pain, flourishing relationships that bring about loneliness, and knowledge that only brings about more and more challenging questions and mysteries. Such genius shines in the frame narrative as older Kvothe suffers from the extreme weight of the world he’s shaped. His plight in the present is tragic and potent and I want nothing more than for him to find his strength again. As he speaks of the blossoming skills of his younger self, it casts a harsh light on these older-man’s pains. It’s a terrifyingly well-crafted structure and the tweaks Rothfuss made in The Wise Man’s Fears evaporated my ‘perfect protagonist’ complaints.
A few of the other fixes are easy. The Wise Man’s Fear features almost no paragraphs that tell you how you’re supposed to feel, which are too common in The Name of the Wind. Instead the passages of downtime between sections where Kote is talking to Chronicler and Bast are more contemplative, enhancing the stories of younger Kvothe and not detracting from them. Even better is when those bits move the plot forward bit by bit, providing hints about what has happened to the world and how it happened, while making a vague suggestion that even three entries in the story won’t be nearly enough.
The self-inserted spoilers are gone. He didn’t replace them with anything. Characters merely stop announcing the broad strokes of what will happen before Kote gives the detailed account. Such an easy fix, and yet it makes a huge difference to my enjoyment. I revile spoilers and have only the slightest respect for even the vaguest and most delicate of foreshadowing. If you’re going to hint at what’s to come, make it just that: a hint, preferably obscured by irrelevance and masked in metaphor.
Even the back cover of The Wise Man’s Fear isn’t bad. Yes, I read it, even though I told myself I wasn’t going to. When I was somewhere around page 1050, it caught my eye on accident and I soon realized it wasn’t anything like the disaster of its predecessor, just a few short sentences.
All of that makes it sound like a better book than The Name of the Wind. Perhaps, but loved it the same amount. In both novels, Patrick Rothfuss’s love of storytelling and devotion to his universe is evident on every page. There are so many exciting moments, so many moments that are beautiful in their sadness, so many that are frightening, so many that make you feel Kvothe’s frustration in a good way, or make you breathe easily as Kvothe reaps the rewards for his efforts. I feel I can grasp the universe well in spite of its complexities and magics. I like it. I like reading about the new places, the new characters, the new creeds, myths, and mysteries. There’s so much to love and explore in these books. Kvothe takes the reader on his journey, keeping him or her aware of the hundreds of forces that can potentially harm him and charming him or her with his wit, independence, determination, and a code of ethics all his own.
The story picks up right where The Name of the Wind left off, and then drops off again somewhere in the middle of the journey, just farther down the road.
“He crafted so much story that he’s now constrained by the number of pages that can be physically glued together.”
My main concern now is that he’s rushed. One might think that that’s impossible given the length of the novel, but it’s true. He crafted so much story that he’s now constrained by the number of pages that can be physically glued together. There are several little moments and one big moment where Rothfuss essentially skips parts of Kvothe’s life story. You don’t need them to appreciate the character on the other parts, and he definitely keeps most of it, but I’m still sad I didn’t get the trial or the shipwreck or the full details of some of the university terms. Sometimes telling the bare bones of a section can quickly get a character from one place to another without any harm done, but I could tell these are sections Rothfuss wanted to write with the same tender care as the rest, but he hadn’t the time or couldn’t fit it. He had too much.
I’d say a story should be as long as it needs to be, no matter how many pages or even volumes. That’s my policy. I think Martin and Rothfuss would call me young and naive. I understand. Not everyone is willing to put in the effort. I would have read The Wise Man’s Fear if it was five-thousand pages, but most wouldn’t have picked it up. Something this brilliant deserves to be widely read. Some people might scoff at that length, making some claim like I’d find in essays on how to write query letters: a better writer can say all he needs to say in a single paragraph. Or: never use twenty words when ten will do. Morons. Lazy morons. I’ll save that rant for another day, but anyone who thinks Rothfuss didn’t use his words well just because there’s a lot of them, didn’t actually read them.
I could rant instead about some specifics within the novel. I could talk about how I have more fun with the story when Kvothe is at the university, for example, but I feel the story is progressing better when he’s away, and what an interesting dynamic that creates for the reader. I could speak about how Denna frustrates me, and how Rothfuss appears to want to push the amount he can tease his reader with a burgeoning love story to the absolute limit, so the frustrations feel like the ones I’m supposed to have. I could highlight the sections that give the most satisfaction like Kvothe’s departure from the nobility or the leading of the mercenary gang or the encounter with those masquerading as Edema Ruh. I could discuss the Adem and how they’re a great driving force for much of the novel, simultaneously an obstacle and a means to give Kvothe the abilities he needs to tackle his challenges later on in his life, but how I didn’t like them that much because of their arrogance and ignorance. I won’t though. The most important thing for me is that I grew as a person for having read this book, and how when I think of these elements in the future, I’ll want to sink myself back into these sections again.
The Wise Man’s Fear is extraordinary. Do not read it without reading The Name of the Wind first, and I could understand wanting to wait until the series is finished and available to the public before jumping in, but once you do, you’ll be glad you did.
Do you have someone or something in your life that you love so much, sometimes you think to yourself: I can’t possibly love this anymore? Then that person or thing does something that blows you away yet again, just when you thought you’d reached the limit of your love. The act resonates inside you for a long time and makes you wish you could rededicate your life to the pursuit of that feeling. Well, stories are one such thing for me, and The Wise Man’s Fear is one such act. Reading it made me love this art form even more than I did before, and I could never thank its creator enough for giving me that feeling I thought maybe was impossible to feel again. This is among the best if not the very best fantasy novel I’ve ever read.