The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind
By Patrick Rothfuss

I’ve never seen an author take such a course and create such a masterpiece. Rothfuss gives Freytag the finger and ignores traditional narrative structure. Some may not like the lack of rising action, climax, and falling action, but I decided to stand and applaud Rothfuss for not conforming to the standard and still being able to spin an amazing tale. Of course, for me, this proved to be a bit awkward as I ended up standing and applauding in bed while my wife was sleeping. After forty hours of counseling, a trip to the state hospital and my new special sleeping blankie (it has straps) we decided I am now no longer allowed to read in bed.

Enough about plot and straitjackets. Rothfuss has a few signature aspects to his writing that make The Name of The Wind a brilliant novel. Every novel I am ever going to review is going to have amazing characters. If your characters are boring then there is no way your story will make my list. So needless to say his characters are amazing and you will fall in love with their personalities. That is a given but the character development is so good I feel I have to at least mention it.

Along that same vein, the world is great. Again, if you have an unimaginative world then you aren’t going to make this list, but I do feel it is worth mentioning. Primarily because I can’t stop thinking about it. We even played a D&D campaign set in the world for a few months after everyone in one of my gaming groups plowed through The Name of The Wind.

When @writerbrendan and I sat down to write a book after years of being apart one of the things we focused on was the magic system. Everyone has their own magic system and there are thousands of fantasy books out there that have cool systems with virtually no character development or plot to speak of. Rothfuss has an amazing magical structure. A good part of the book is set in a school of magic (not going to say more than that because I don’t want to tip the hand of the plot) and the system of magic alone would make this book a worthy read.

Finally, the thing I appreciate the most about Patrick Rothfuss is he is a gods damn word smith. Every word in this book is worked over and over until it shines. I can’t imagine how much… nevermind… I know exactly how much work he put into this book and it shows. The writing is beautiful. I love to just sit and reread sentences over and over. My wife has taken to putting a napkin down my collar to catch the drool.

I would recommend these books to anyone who is a hardcore fantasy geek, as well as those who know nothing about the genre.

The Kingkiller Chronicle
The Name of the Wind
A Wise Man's Fear 


Review by Cordell