Awhile back, a few people recommended Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind to me. I read the promotional, back-of-the-book blurb, which, abbreviated, goes:

My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as "quothe." [...] I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.

Such may not be the case for you, but I do not dig the above text. I'm all for pride and honesty and all against being false humility, but the character speaking above sounds like an arrogant cock. I read fantasy as much for characters as anything, and I don't want to spend hardback prices to read a monstrous book about a guy that I don't like. After seeing the blurb, I ended up shuffling The Name of the Wind to the bottom of my to-read list. A couple months ago, however, I was walking through a bookstore on a buying spree, and noticed that The Name of the Wind was now in paperback form. I was in an adventurous mood, and I had gotten those recommendations, so I decided to pick it up. I still think the promotional blurb is cockery, but now I also think it does the book a bit of an injustice.

The Name of the Wind is a story-within-story tale. The book is in third person, and about an unassuming innkeeper named Kote who polishes the bar of his empty tavern out in the middle of butt-fucking-nowhere. Ordinary as the innkeeper may be, though, he was at one point the famous hero Kvothe, about whom a hundred stories have since sprung up, and he is now presumed dead, or as good as. A scribe named Chronicler, interested in the truth behind legends, ends up tracking Kvothe down, and convinces him to tell the truth of his life. The vast majority of the text is Kvothe's first person retelling of his life, with this book - apparently the first of three - covering his early years, from birth to his middle teens. There are third person interludes which hint that perhaps Chronicler is not the only one seeking out Kvothe, and that perhaps his days of heroism are not over.

It turns out that Kvothe is in fact something of an arrogant cock, but he's a very likable arrogant cock. I am personally a big fan of the notion that when it comes to fiction, there should be a price for everything, that all joy and triumph should be bought and paid for. A happy ending that comes at no cost is empty and hollow. Rothfuss does a good job of sticking to that, which further blunts the potential annoyance at Kvothe's innate genius and (at times) arrogance. Kvothe is, ultimately, and incredibly smart and gifted boy, and it could be easy for him to succeed at everything, fail at nothing, kill the dragon, get the girl, and so on and so forth until the story loses entertainment value in light of certain victory at every turn. Such is not that case, though. Kvothe may be very good - and there is enough actual, genuine evidence in the book for me to buy that, which is also important - but he is not always successful. He's young, and brash, and inexperienced, and sometimes his judgment is not the best, and sometimes it leads him to painful failure. He pays for his successes and his gifts quite dearly, which makes them seem genuine, makes you sympathize with him, and keeps the narrative interesting.

I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't say too much, but the general gist of The Name of the Wind is that Kvothe grows up an Edema Ruh (read: gypsy), trained in the art of music and acting and travel. In time his company picks up an Arcanist (read: scholarly wizard), from whom Kvothe learns chemisty, alchemy, anatomy, sympathy (read: magic), and so on. Eventually he makes his way to the one and only Arcanists' Academy in order to learn from those who taught his master. Kvothe's gift for most everything makes for a rapid rise in the Academy, and makes him some friends, but also makes him some enemies.

The plot is good, and the setting is interesting enough, but what really makes the book is the cast. Kvothe is well written, and, as I've said, likable where he could very easily have been hateable. Several of the characters have very distinct voices of their own, and one or two are interesting in their own rights. But there are really just two truly main characters, and the, shall we say, pseudo-romance between the two is quite compelling. It's not standard fantasy stuff: handsome boy meets beautiful girl, each is captivated by the other, their interest is solely for each other, and they eventually fall in love. Kvothe's would-be lover is not a typical fantasy maiden, and their relationship is hardly simple. It's almost a sort of painful thing to watch, though it's also entirely believable, which makes it all the more compelling. I sympathize for Kvothe, even though a good part of the blame for the less-than-fairy-tale nature of their relationship lies with him. His actions are, after all, understandable, even if they're not exactly heroic.

The Name of the Wind isn't flawless, though, despite being pretty close. The first thing that bugged me was that it feels most of the time like Rothfuss is writing about adults when he is in fact writing about fifteen year olds (and some ranging up to eighteen, but still). Men in their twenties and thirties are pursuing barely-teen girls, and young Kvothe spends most of his time talking like and being treated like an adult by people twice his age. Even given that this takes place in a Renaissance-type world, and shit regarding marriageable ages was different back then, and even given that Kvothe and some of the other young characters are terribly smart and whatnot, it's hard to buy at times. Kvothe acts his age in ways, at times, but there were a few times when I found myself quirking an eyebrow at the implausibility of things.

My other complaint is that The Name of the Wind isn't the first book of a trilogy so much as it's the first third of a story. The ending is a complete and total non-ending. Expect absolutely no closure whatsoever on absolutely any front at all. Not a single portion of the narrative as established by halfway through the book finds its conclusion by the end. It just stops. I found myself wondering, as I was at a hundred pages left, then fifty, then twenty, how Rothfuss would manage to bring things to a close. He does not. He just stops.

I guess my final complaint is that I now have to wait a good six months for the next installment (which I'll have to buy as a hardback), and then another year or two after that for the final. Those problems only exist because I enjoyed The Name of the Wind so much, though. It's a fantastic book, and after I got a quarter of the way in, I devoured the rest, and am now anticipating the next installment.