Pieces on Speculative Fiction

4 stars out of 5, first impressions, Patrick Rotfuss’s opening of the Kingkiller Chronicles shows his talent as storyteller. The story is moving and moves at quick enough pace along with solid and likeable enough characters.

The story starts with an injured local stumbling bleeding into the village inn with a spider-like dead monster that killed his horse and nearly him. From there on everything starts to wind out with the innkeeper Kote taking the lead role. It turns out that he previously was Kvothe, notorious mage-warrior whose story we partly hear. So the format is story in a story as Kvothe stars to tell his tale.

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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.