The Name of the Wind

I just finished Patrick Rothfuss’ wonderful freshman novel, The Name of the Wind.

I recently gushed about Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels, and while these are good because of their homage to intellectualism and the richly drawn characters, they aren’t as immersive as Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. I always read the next fantasy novel with the hope that I’ll lose myself in a world or a story. I want to sink so completely into someone’s creation that I’m totally unaware of my surroundings. Most of the time, this immersion is elusive, or at best, incomplete.

Fortunately, The Name of the Wind delivers in spades.

From the moment I picked up the book, I found the story to be compelling and magical. I was drawn forward to each page, putting it aside reluctantly and only because I had pressing real-life responsibilities. This book, and others like it, are the reason why I read at all. I hope to find the next great story–the one that makes me come back year after year to the same novel for a quick read through to see what I missed the last time.

This is the tale of Kvothe, born an actor/minstrel, trained as an arcanist, and eventually a hero several times over. After a full life, Kvothe wants nothing more than to run a quiet inn on the edge of nowhere, but a famous historian (known as Chronicler) discovers his identity and whereabouts and insists on his life story in an effort to seperate fact from fiction, myth from truth. Kvothe begins with his childhood and ends the first book with his studies at the “University,” a place where arcanists learn science, medicine, and magic. Kvothe’s story is full of tragedy, unrequited love, adventure, and discovery–woven with just the right amount of emotion to be a believable auto-biography.

I am eager for the next book in the series. It cannot come soon enough.