Pieces on Speculative Fiction

Name of the Wind is the best new novel I’ve read this year. Seriously I can’t understand how Acacia(review) can be mentioned in the same breath as candidate for best fantasy debut this year. Name of the Wind has everything Acacia doesn’t have: clear writing, engaging story(or story in a story) and characters who you come to care about. I have to admit that I’m a sucker for coming of age stories, but this one was really, really good. As far as entertaining fantasy goes, this is top notch. Only gripe I have is that the story presented is a premise of a huge story arc. The author has set it so that he could write probably quite a few parts to his Kingkiller Chronicles.

After reading the first 60 pages I wasn’t really sold. There was some apparently evil monsters, this innkeeper who isn’t what he seems etc. I even put it down to read Tim Powers’ Last Call and Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged. Today I continued where I left of and had to change the plans for the day as I just couldn’t stop reading.

2 stars out of 5. Acacia offers complex fantasy world where the line between heroes and villains is blurred. Sadly there are way too many point-of-view characters and the characterization just isn’t very good. Despite the verbose prose there was lack of feeling between me and the book, at no point did I care about what happend to the various people.

The story is about the children of the Acacian King Leodan. Acacia rules the known world and has done so for more than 20 generations. The times are troubled, Meinish assassin is closing in and Acacian troops in Mein are facing a dire new threat. From there on the story slowly unravels.

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