Combatant’s Critique

-Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind-


In a world full of tales about fantasy, many stories seem to be a reiteration of other stories before it. A renegade leaves his old ways behind, the princess dislikes here role as part of the strict high nobility, or a poor farmer boy discovers he is part of a world-ending prophecy. Now, let it be known that many stories are not completely original, but the best stories are those that twist their base plot into something almost unidentifiable. Recently (as in nearly two years ago), a novel was set upon the shelves of bookstores across the nation. This tome is titled The Name of the Wind, written by a scholar known as Patrick Rothfuss. To keep it simple, the book is about an innkeeper, Kvothe, who is confronted by a well known recorder known as the Chronicler. While hesitant at first, Kvothe eventually agrees to allow the Chronicler to record the telling of his troubled past. This takes place over the span of three days, with The Name of the Wind being the first day. Kvothe tells of his search for the fabled and malignant Chandrian and his arrival at the famed University. From his youth to late adolescence, the beginnings of a story wrought with joy, sorrow, heroics, romance, and intrigue is spun. In a nutshell, it would be the hybrid offspring produced by The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Arabian Nights, were these fantastic tales capable of doing such a thing. For those in search of great new fantasy fiction, Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind is worth the time and money, with five reviewer’s blades out of, well, five.


Score: 5/5


Note: On 1 March, 2011, the second day of Kvothe’s tale will be spun in Patrick Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear.