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rushthatspeaksSometimes the universe conspires to throw a book at your head. B. has been suggesting I read this for a while, and then ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky started doing a close-reading over at torcom, and the sequel came out and all, and so finally I said to myself all right I will go to the library and I will say to them 'so like basically you've never had a copy of this in ever, how long is the reserve list?' Which I did. And they said you are the first person on it because we just bought like ten copies. So I reserved it. And then I went over, as one does, to the library discard shelving, because it is insane not to go over that every so often.
There was a copy in the library discard shelving. I can take a hint. (Also a book.) Then I had to go cancel the reserve I'd put in fifteen seconds earlier, an odd mental experience.
Anyway, this is officially a Big Fat Fantasy Novel, of the nearly wrist-spraining variety, and it appears that it will be one of at least three. Kvothe, who has done a whole bunch of legendary and near-legendary things, is now running an inn in a small town in the middle of nowhere; this is his life story, as told to a chronicler who's managed to track him down, interspersed with segments showing things going on in the inn, the way the state of the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, and so on.
This book fascinated me because I really like it on every level except that of basic prose construction. I've heard a lot of complaints that Kvothe comes across as a Mary Sue, because he is basically a salad dressing and a dessert topping-- youngest student in the history of the University, preternaturally gifted at languages, best musician anybody's ever heard, etc. etc. etc. The thing is, he is also one of the most unreliable narrators who ever unreliabled. Of course he is trying to make himself look good in his own life story, while also being the sort of person who does not admit it and possibly does not even want to make himself look good in his own life story. I take everything he says with a salt lick. What he considers to be his virtues are all right out there on the surface, as are what he considers to be his flaws. His real flaws and his real virtues are never stated outright and are really, really not what he thinks they are.
Also, the world of the book looks on the surface like a lot of fairly standard high-fantasy medieval-ish worlds, magical University and faeries and everything, but that's in a lot of ways a superficial appearance over something much more unusual: a world in which there are conflicting versions of the core mythology that is clearly the metaphysical explanation for what's going on, and the versions conflict really drastically, and I don't think we've even heard the right one, because there isn't a right one, unless you ask the people who were there (who will lie to you). The stories here do the thing that folktales really do where you can see how they evolved into each other and what elements of each one got swiped and stood on their heads... pretty much the way Kvothe's life has, both in his version and otherwise. I don't have enough data from just the first book, but if I have picked the correct elements of the various mythologies as things to be paying attention to, this is a pretty goddamn smart and subtle piece of plotting cleverly disguised as a book where the hero is a genius a lot.
However. I realize it may have been necessary for the massive shell-game I suspect this entire trilogy of being, but. Can we stop having descriptions of Kvothe as having hair like fire? In fact, can we stop having-- okay, not the actual poetry, because, and this amazes me, there are portions of this book where people speak in rhyme and meter and it does not suck; it's about the level you get when people do that in real life-- but can we stop having the cliches? Because this book gave me on occasion the desperate feeling of wanting to go through it and chuck out ninety percent of the adjectives, and this is why people think of Kvothe as a Mary Sue, because if you use some of these adjectives in fanfiction nowadays you get laughed at. It was never actually unreadable, but I stared incredulously at various sentences every so often just thinking 'really?' I am going to have trouble forgiving Rothfuss the adjectives even for the sake of the shell-game, because yes, I am certainly not paying attention to the man behind the curtain, but I do not think that horrified incredulity was the distraction that was maybe the best idea. If it is intentional. God, I hope it's intentional.
The details are fun, though, a large and entertaining world full of things like having to kill a dragon because it's hopped up on opiates, a library that is the largest building in the entire city and has no internal lighting system, one of the more entertaining university entrance exams I've seen in a while, and various other coolness.
So, amazingly enough, I found this basically as good as it's been hyped up to be, enjoyed it, recommend it, and look forward to reading the sequel. I can't remember the last time I saw a book so thoroughly disguise itself as basically almost another genre from what I think it actually is. I am impressed.
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papersky started doing a close-reading over at torcom, and the sequel came out and all, and so finally I said to myself all right I will go to the library and I will say to them 'so like basically you've never had a copy of this in ever, how long is the reserve list?' Which I did. And they said you are the first person on it because we just bought like ten copies. So I reserved it. And then I went over, as one does, to the library discard shelving, because it is insane not to go over that every so often.There was a copy in the library discard shelving. I can take a hint. (Also a book.) Then I had to go cancel the reserve I'd put in fifteen seconds earlier, an odd mental experience.
Anyway, this is officially a Big Fat Fantasy Novel, of the nearly wrist-spraining variety, and it appears that it will be one of at least three. Kvothe, who has done a whole bunch of legendary and near-legendary things, is now running an inn in a small town in the middle of nowhere; this is his life story, as told to a chronicler who's managed to track him down, interspersed with segments showing things going on in the inn, the way the state of the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, and so on.
This book fascinated me because I really like it on every level except that of basic prose construction. I've heard a lot of complaints that Kvothe comes across as a Mary Sue, because he is basically a salad dressing and a dessert topping-- youngest student in the history of the University, preternaturally gifted at languages, best musician anybody's ever heard, etc. etc. etc. The thing is, he is also one of the most unreliable narrators who ever unreliabled. Of course he is trying to make himself look good in his own life story, while also being the sort of person who does not admit it and possibly does not even want to make himself look good in his own life story. I take everything he says with a salt lick. What he considers to be his virtues are all right out there on the surface, as are what he considers to be his flaws. His real flaws and his real virtues are never stated outright and are really, really not what he thinks they are.
Also, the world of the book looks on the surface like a lot of fairly standard high-fantasy medieval-ish worlds, magical University and faeries and everything, but that's in a lot of ways a superficial appearance over something much more unusual: a world in which there are conflicting versions of the core mythology that is clearly the metaphysical explanation for what's going on, and the versions conflict really drastically, and I don't think we've even heard the right one, because there isn't a right one, unless you ask the people who were there (who will lie to you). The stories here do the thing that folktales really do where you can see how they evolved into each other and what elements of each one got swiped and stood on their heads... pretty much the way Kvothe's life has, both in his version and otherwise. I don't have enough data from just the first book, but if I have picked the correct elements of the various mythologies as things to be paying attention to, this is a pretty goddamn smart and subtle piece of plotting cleverly disguised as a book where the hero is a genius a lot.
However. I realize it may have been necessary for the massive shell-game I suspect this entire trilogy of being, but. Can we stop having descriptions of Kvothe as having hair like fire? In fact, can we stop having-- okay, not the actual poetry, because, and this amazes me, there are portions of this book where people speak in rhyme and meter and it does not suck; it's about the level you get when people do that in real life-- but can we stop having the cliches? Because this book gave me on occasion the desperate feeling of wanting to go through it and chuck out ninety percent of the adjectives, and this is why people think of Kvothe as a Mary Sue, because if you use some of these adjectives in fanfiction nowadays you get laughed at. It was never actually unreadable, but I stared incredulously at various sentences every so often just thinking 'really?' I am going to have trouble forgiving Rothfuss the adjectives even for the sake of the shell-game, because yes, I am certainly not paying attention to the man behind the curtain, but I do not think that horrified incredulity was the distraction that was maybe the best idea. If it is intentional. God, I hope it's intentional.
The details are fun, though, a large and entertaining world full of things like having to kill a dragon because it's hopped up on opiates, a library that is the largest building in the entire city and has no internal lighting system, one of the more entertaining university entrance exams I've seen in a while, and various other coolness.
So, amazingly enough, I found this basically as good as it's been hyped up to be, enjoyed it, recommend it, and look forward to reading the sequel. I can't remember the last time I saw a book so thoroughly disguise itself as basically almost another genre from what I think it actually is. I am impressed.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
