Number 17 is Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. This is the sequel to The Name of the Wind. We pick up the story pretty much where it left off. In fact, it started the exact same way as the last book and I had to double check I'd bought the right one. But I had so off I went. We're back at the University with Kvothe. Of course he continues to get in trouble and eventually, he's in so much trouble that he has to take a leave of absence from the school. Funny enough, when this happened, I had been thinking that we need to get out of the University, and voila. Kvothe's lone noble friend has finally managed to attract what could be an extremely powerful sponsor for him. So off Kvothe goes to try and impress a man who's close to a king. I liked this part of the novel. There's some nice court intreigue, and quite a bit of romance as Kvothe also manages to run into his unrequited love, Denna, as well as help his patron woe an appropriate bride. The action then moves to the countryside as Kvothe is charged with to rid the neighbouring woods of bandits who are stealing tax money from his patron. With the usual fantasy small band of misfits, they manage to do so. I liked this part too. It was the next part I didn't. We then get this... diatribe where Kvothe follows a legendary creature of the Fae and becomes her lover for awhile. I don't know. I found this part rather boring. And trite. And annoying. And repetative. However, once he leaves and goes to the homelands of one of his comrades, it gets interesting again.

For the most part, I truly enjoy Rothfuss' world builiding, he's doing a lovely job overall, but I found so much about his foray into fae to be a mistep. It just came across as... too much.

We return to the University and I found by that time, that, like Kvothe, it was good to be back on familiar ground.

I'd also like to move the story forward in the narrative framing plot too. I'm sure we will, but right now, it's moving a little too slowly.

Number 12 this year is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Thanks to all the follow up to A Dance With Dragons I'm on quite the fantasy kick right now.

So I came to this book in a funny way. Two years ago, I voted in the silly cage match on suvudu.com where they pit various characters from different fantasy series against one another in mock battles. I started voting because one of the characters involved was Jaime Lannister. Jaime had a solid voting block and moved all the way through the competition to the final, where he was defeated by Rand Al'Thor from the Wheel of Time saga. But... the character Jaime defeated to get to the final was someone I'd never heard of before, a guy named Kvothe (pronounced close to 'Quothe'). Didn't think much of him didn't bother to look him up, I just voted for Jaime (and by this time, GRRM himself had gotten in on the fun and was doing little writeups of the battles himself, which definitely helped Jaime in the voting). I even remember thinking that Qvothe was a stupid-sounding name and basically dismissed it summarily (I have this rather strange bias that I usually have to like the names of the main characters I'm reading about in order to have full enjoyment)

A week before ADWD came out, I was browsing in Chapters and one of the employees recommended The Name of the Wind to me. I immediately recognized Kvothe's name, and was all set to dismiss it again, but then I realized; not only was this fellow recommending it to me, but on the strength of one book, this character had garnered enough votes in a contest voted on by fans of the genre, to get to the quarter finals. Hmm. Maybe there is something to this story. So I took the advice and the book came home with me.

I actually started it just before ADWD came out, but then set it aside in order to deal with that incredibly anticipated monstrosity. I picked it up the moment ADWD was finished and... I enjoyed it.

It's an interesting narrative, with Kvothe, now a simple innkeeper called Kote, basically telling his life story to a Chronicler. It seems that Kvothe has lead an extrodinary life, the life of a hero, and there is some mystery surrounding his disappearnce.

As with many fantasy heroes, Kvothe 'suffers' from disgustingly perfect syndrome. He's incredibly intelligent, the son of wandering musicians, playwrites, etc. So he can sing, he can play, her can perform, and he learns so very very quickly. When his family and troupe are killed by a seemingly mythical group of bad guys, Kvothe's comfortable life is (of course) thrown upside down. He spends three years living on the streets of a large city before he takes control of his destiny and goes to learn at the University, a place that teaches what passes as the world's magic.

The book, and Kvothe himself would get tiresome after awhile due to his incredibly gifted intellect, but fotunatately Rothfuss does balance this nicely with Kvothe's penchant for getting into trouble. It is, of course, a common problem of those who are so much smarter than most everyone around them, but in this case it does work. It's not so much you want to see Kvothe taken down a peg or anything like that, you actually do want him to succeed.

Rothfuss has done an excellent job of giving us a protaganist who might have tilted towards unlikable, but there is enough strength and depth to this charater that you do want to know how he went from poor child prodigy to hero and then fell to lowly inkeeper. And since this book revolves around the one character (told from his POV pretty much), that's pretty freaking important.

The sequel to this has just come out. And yeah, I'll probably end up picking it up.