Pink Slime: The Name of the Wind (Part 2)

Part the First

Chapter 6

Chronicler wakes up and comes down to talk to Kote. Chronicler's real name is Devan Lochees. He prefers Chronicler. This means nothing. He's a scholar of some note famous for writing a treatise on a big lizard and debunking dragons as a myth. Both characters lament that dragons aren't real.

Yeah. Wouldn't want to have those in a fantasy story.

Chronicler keeps needling Kote about sharing his history since there are people back home who are starting to talk shit about Kvothe as a villainous assassin. A woman is brought up and she's a touchy subject for the totally heterosexual Kvothe whose dialogue with his apprentice up to this point hasn't read like the two are in a stable, loving, long-term relationship. Kvothe apparently killed an angel, or something. This is apparently a big deal.

Chronicler only wants to bother Kvothe for an evening to get his story, and Kvothe snaps at him about how that's not enough time and not enough preparation. It'll take three days to recount his life. Chronicler interviewed an 80 year old retired adventurer and that only took 2 days. But no, Kvothe is adamant about needing three days and screw whatever appointments with a local earl he needs to keep because Kvothe is an inconsiderate asshole. Never mind that he's not even thirty years old. Kvothe says he will start talking the next day.

Chapter 7

Yet another morning at the inn and Chronicler demonstrates that he can write really fast because he's got this form of shorthand that he's developed that's really fast and is basically Chinese because its a set of vertical and horizontal lines representing sounds because we're being oh so clever.

This shit doesn't matter to the story being told aside from Chronicler marveling that Kvothe can pick it up quickly without any prior exposure to it. Because he's that kind of character and won't pass up an opportunity to humble brag about it.

Kvothe preambles some blah blah blah, jokingly starting at the beginning of the universe before mentioning the many names he's accumulated because he has SO MANY NAMES AND THEY ALL MEAN IMPORTANT STUFF BECAUSE HE'S SO IMPORTANT.

Once he gets going its not so bad for this chapter, but the fact that we've had a prologue and then six actual chapters that amount to nothing but an even longer prologue is maddening. Everything except the last three chapters of what I've read so far could've been excised without losing ANYTHING. Its just aimless filler that reinforces a melancholy mood that is already established in the prologue chapter. Instead we get busywork and a detailed description of Kvothe's surroundings, while the side characters get almost nothing to distinguish them from each other: names and minimal descriptions, and virtually no personalities that differ from each other. They might as well have blank faces. They're interchangeable and can't even be considered actual characters.

Chapter 8

The story actually starts now. Kvothe started out as a kid in a family of “Edema Ruh” which will hereafter be referred to as gypsies because there is no difference. The family troupe was called Lord Grayfallow's Men, because Kvothe can't be from some poor circus of randos operating in cow towns to get by. No, they're official court performers. Who are operating in cow towns to get by.

Dad's an actor and musician, mom's a poet/wordsmith. “They were Ruh down to their bones, and that, really, is all that needs to be said.”

Except mom's not really a gypsy. She ran off from her life as a noble to be with his father. So the above sentence is a lie. And Kvothe is secretly part-noble as a result. Because of course he is.

He rattles off a few of his mentors and how he learned stuff from them real quick because he was a curious child. He mentions Abenthy, his first “real” teacher.

Then he recounts a mayor giving the troupe a hard time about performing. When they say they're officially licensed, he responds with a legitimate concern that the last time performers came to town the townsfolk got drunk, rowdy, and smashed up the public house that the town owns and maintains. He offers them some money as a gesture of goodwill if they'll leave town without performing. He is treated as an antagonist because to the troupe its an insulting pittance because they're entitled little shits.

Dad namedrops his noble connections instead of actually negotiating, which gets the mayor to reverse position out of fear. Kvothe calls him an ignorant blatherskate because that's how eleven-year-olds talk when their author has seen an episode of DuckTales. Dad makes it a point of calling the villagers “god-fearing folk.” You're in a medieval-style world where a farming community's entire fate can be decided by a single disastrous season. No shit they're going to be superstitious.

Blathering blatherskite!

There's a bunch of padded conversation, and Kvothe discusses Trip, the juggler and jester who can get away with saying just about anything because he's a jester. I'd rather follow his story, to be honest.

So anyway, Kvothe sees a wagon rattle into town and the Mayor and a constable are talking to the guy, who's trying to pass himself off as a peddler and a tinker without a license. (Tinkers were established in the prologue chapters as a respectable profession). He identifies himself as an arcanist and calls the mayor an idiot. Again with the God-Fearing identifier, only this time from the mayor himself. He doesn't want any meddlers with the dark arts messing up his town.

A bossy old man rides into town lying about his identity and coming across as incredibly shady, then tries to intimidate the mayor into letting him stay. The mayor threatens to jail him overnight for vagrancy and threatening behavior and let him go on his way in the morning. The constable bravely tries to arrest this spellcaster of unknown power while armed with little more than a stout stick, then the arcanist does some wind magic and the mayor and constable run off terrified. We are meant to sympathize with the insane vagrant.

This pushy bully is Abenthy, and Kvothe invites him to join the troupe after immediately bonding with him. Despite being eleven years old.

Chapter 9

We now get a description of Abenthy, a chapter after he's introduced, and he looks nothing like the hard-traveling vagabond Chapter 8 made me picture. He's portly, for instance, which indicates a comfortable, regular supply of food. This is not how you introduce characters.

“He spoke gently, laughed often, and never exercised his wit at the expense of others.” Chapter 8 proves this to be a lie.

Abenthy talks about arcanists and magic and “sympathy.” Sympathy is part of the magic system, only its not really magic. But knowing sympathy isn't enough to be an arcanist, you need to go to Hogwar—err, the Arcanum.

Abenthy shows his Arcanum guilder, which is a lead medallion that feels numbingly cold to anyone who's not the owner. This is the badge of rank of an arcanist.

We learn that Trip probably has a magical knack because he always rolls sevens with dice. Any dice. I'd rather read a story about Trip hustling gamblers.

Abenthy takes Kvothe on as an apprentice, and within two months the Gary Stu has learned how to do all sorts of advanced things, like distilling liquor, setting broken bones, and learning how to make a bunch of apphrodisiacs, contraceptives, fantasy Viagra, and something to help women...down there.

Keep in mind that this is an eleven year old learning how to make sex potions.

That's not weird at all.

Chapter 10

Magic lesson time. Abenthy (I refuse to call him Kvothe's nickname of “Ben” because he's already too much of a Kenobi rip-off).

Abenthy teaches him Alar, which is key to being an arcanist. He tells Kvothe to believe that a rock will fall upwards when he drops it. It falls to the ground. Teaching himself to believe this is the hardest thing Kvothe has ever done, and it takes him all of an afternoon. 

Poor baby.

“Finally Ben was able to drop the rock and I retained my firm belief that it wouldn't fall despite evidence to the contrary.”

Having successfully learned schizophrenia, he learns Heart of Stone, which is a mental exercise that compartmentalizes your emotions and prejudices into a Zen or Stoic state where you can think clearly and objectively and go to your sister's funeral without crying (his example, not mine).

Having successfully learned sociopathy, he learns Seek the Stone, which is a mind game where one part of your mind hides an imaginary stone inside an imaginary room and another part of your mind plays hide-and-seek trying to find it. The goal seems to be a split personality.

So an old man meets, then forms a close mentor relationship with an eleven year old boy and then teaches him a bunch of information about sex and a “magic” system that leaves him sociopathic, schizophrenic, and dissociative (the latter two frequently appearing in victims of childhood abuse). I genuinely and truly hope that this is purely coincidental because the alternative is sinister. 

I'm beginning to understand why they burned arcanists.

This is where I tapped out. 

This is the worst thing I've read since The DaVinci Code, which I also abandoned early on, but at least that had action. Stupid, nonsensical action, but stuff happened. 10 chapters and nearly 100 pages over the course of a week, and the only impression that I get out of it was that Kvothe is a self-righteous asshole mary sue protagonist and that an editor should've hacked off entire chapters in the beginning to make it readable.

This is a terrible book. Its not interesting. Its not well written. Its not even iconoclastic. Even by 2008 when it was published, Modern Fantasy had already established all new clichés for the genre and this reads like its ticking off the boxes. 1) Protagonist from a podunk who's actually hugely powerful and everybody who's “good” loves him and hands him things unquestioningly. 2) Power comes easily to him. 3) Edgy atheism. 4) Idiot locals that don't even get descriptions. 5) A magic system that isn't nearly as clever as it thinks it is. 6) Subversion that is only subversive if your frame of reference for fantasy is The Lord of the Rings, which was first published in 1954. The Name of the Wind was published 54 years after The Fellowship of the Ring. Its already been subverted. You're not bringing anything to the table that isn't identical to everything else being published in mainstream SF/F.

George R. R. Martin writes long books popular with the Modernist set, but at least things happen in them. Characters, situations, settings are introduced and shaken up. People die. There's magic. There's talk of monsters. Its not great, but at least stuff happens. Tolkien wrote long works too, but at least he's a master worldbuilder and an actual wordsmith, channeling ancient epics to create his own. He's also got setups, introductions, and characters that are instantly likable that you invest in their struggles. There is weight behind every chapter, even the Infodump at Rivendell.

Rothfuss' prose is universally praised, and I don't see it. Most of the text is basic, functional sentences (this is fine, this is the brick and mortar of writing). Dialogue is circular, banal and clunky, wasting huge chunks of time and is only occasionally interesting. When he does try to get fancy, it turns into a cringe-fest of the worst kind of purple prose that the Modernist crowd supposedly hates. (See the quote about the sword I included yesterday). The only characters who are described with any kind of detail are Kvothe and Abenthy. Everyone else is a mannequin lacking in personality (at least up to the point where I stopped reading). They are set dressing for the Kvothe show.