The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This one starts out slow, but picks up tremendously around page 80, again at page 200, and is addictive and impossible to put down by page 300.
I’m not sure what makes this novel so strong — the writing is strong, the story (as the back cover says) is one you’ve read before, but I think it’s really the character of Kvothe that does it. In real life, you might hate this guy out of pure jealousy — he’s incredibly talented, gets a lot of lucky breaks, and gets by often on charm and chutzpah alone. But he suffers too, and oh how he suffers so nobly.
A very impressive book, but sometimes I feel that Kvothe is simply TOO perfect. Things always, eventually, turn out his way. There’s nothing wrong with this, it just makes this fantasy book a little more escapist than many — and, really, since we’re a lot of us reading for escape, this book is just giving us what we want. 🙂