Title: The Name of the Wind
Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Release date: 2007
Source: owned
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The Name of the Wind is one of those enormous epic fantasy books that gets talked about a LOT. It’s on a lot of people’s lists of best fantasy novels. And there is always a certain amount of awe and trepidation involved because the book is SO DAMN LONG. It’s been on my list of books I really need to get around to for AGES, and when I set up my reading challenge for 2020, and I knew that this book would be one I read. But of course, I ended up saving it for last. Literally. This was the last book I finished to complete my 2020 “Storm the Castle” Reading Challenge.

I suspect most people who would be interested in reading this book have already. I feel I’m pretty late to this party, but I will still try to avoid spoilers, just in case.

The Name of the Wind is told through a framing device: an innkeeper of the Waytstone Inn, in a remote village, is approached by a Chronicler and asked to tell his story. For, you see, this simple unassuming innkeeper is in fact the great adventurer and hero Kvothe, in hiding for reasons unknown. There are many rumors and myths about him, but the Chronicler wants the REAL story, and after much cajoling, Kvothe agrees to tell it. The entirety of the book takes place in a single day, as Kvothe begins to tell his story. But, of course, the story covers years of his life, beginning from early childhood through his teenage years at the University.

Kovthe, red-haired and a genius by all accounts, comes from a clan of traveling musicians and performers, but when his entire clan is slaughtered in a mysterious event, he finds himself homeless and alone living on the streets for years. Eventually, he makes his way to the great University where he intends to learn everything it is possible to learn, and become an Artificer, who wields magic. Along the way, he is reviled and beaten, heralded as a prodigy, makes friends and enemies, and falls in love with a very cryptic and mysterious girl.

As Kvothe in the present tells the long, winding story of Kovthe of the past, it becomes increasingly clear that he is now a broken, despondent man, who has given up and is merely waiting for death. But how and why he has come to this is a riddle that we do not solve in the first book (there is a sequel called The Wise Man’s Fear, and a mythical third volume that has yet to be released).

The world-building in this novel is ASTOUNDING. It is rich and detailed and complex and fully embodied. The characters are similarly developed. Obviously, Kvothe himself is enormously complex and fascinating — equal parts endearing, awe-inspiring, and infuriating. I cannot count the number of times I pulled my hair out in frustration while thinking “no, don’t! Stop!” But the other characters are often just as developed and interesting. Kovthe’s main love interest, Denna, is an equally fascinating character. Occasionally, Rothfuss drifts toward the “temptress” cliches, but for the most part she is a fully-developed personality all her own, who is NOT by any means, merely a damsel in distress, or a lovelorn girl waiting for her hero to return to her. She is complex and cryptic and has her own motives and plans, thank you very much. In addition, many of Kvothe’s friends are equally interesting and endearing. I particularly love Kvothe’s most devoted friend/servant, Bast (who is not human and who would absolutely kill for Kvothe without a second’s hesitation). And one of Kvothe’s teachers, Elodin, is strange, hilarious, and clearly insane (or perhaps not?).

I have this book both in print and in audiobook form, and I jumped back and forth between the two for awhile, before finally sticking with the audio so I could “read” while I worked. It took me two months to get through this book. Partly because it is just so long, but also because I was reading four or five other books off-and-on at the same time. But the length of time it took me to read it is NOT a bad indication of its quality. It is an absolutely amazing book — beautiful and breathlessly exciting. The prose is GORGEOUS. The sentences carefully wrought by a writer who clearly knows what he’s doing and is very deliberate in his word choice and cadence. And I got through the last five or six hours of the audiobook in one breathless rush because I needed to know what would happen next. (I would also add the the narrator of the audiobook, Nick Podehl, is EXCELLENT.)

I will definitely be reading the sequel, though I don’t know exactly when. I am a little concerned about the fact that people have apparently been waiting for years for the third one and there has been no news in a very long time. So if you have never read this book before, and want to, I would caution you about. You may be waiting for the third book for a long time. Some people have speculated that Patrick Rothfuss has just quit writing, and disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving us all with cliffhangers and unanswered questions for the rest of our lives. But he did release a novella, The Slow Regard of Silent Things (and what an awesome title is that!?), back in 2014…  so he was at least still writing six years ago? However, the novella is a companion story about one of the side characters from the novels, so who knows?

In any case, I really enjoyed this novel. If you are a fan of epic fantasy in the vein of Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson, I would highly recommend this book. (Though, again, you have probably read it already. I’m pretty late to this party!)