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.
