Tempered Review: The Name of the Wind

Unfinished Fantasy

In Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, boy prodigy Kvothe faces a life of proud triumphs and staggering losses, learning a ton while still often missing the point, in a fantasy world rich in lore and not one but two intriguing magic systems. Read on for my review of The Name of the Wind.

Synopsis: That's Not My Name

This first book in the still-incomplete trilogy called The Kingkiller Chronicle opens with a frame story, in which the unassuming-but-clearly-more-than-he-seems innkeeper Kote, located almost literally in the middle of nowhere, is tracked down by a man called Chronicler, who is convinced that Kote is actually the legendary Kvothe, a mysterious figure about whom numerous stories, often contradictory but usually outrageous, are told across the land. Chronicler, as his designation suggests, is a writer, and one seeking to get the true story of Kvothe directly from the source. After some brief debate, Kote agrees to tell the story of the man he once was, on the condition that he be allowed to tell it how he wishes to do so.

From then on, the story shifts into Kote/Kvothe's first-person narration, interrupted only for occasional third-person interludes back into the frame story setting. We are immediately given a reason behind why Kvothe is so insistent on telling his story in his own way: he grew up as one of the Edema Ruh, a vaguely defined, possibly ethnic group of nomadic performers and entertainers, part theater troupe and part Romani caravan. It is in this upbringing that Kvothe is raised to perform, to act, and to tell stories, and he takes pride in this heritage. 

Later in the book, after being separated from his caravan, he spends time living alone as a street urchin in the alleys of the large and cruel city of Tarbean, until finally making his way to the University, an institution of higher learning in both traditional subjects such as mathematics, grammar, and the physical sciences, as well as the novel's particular brands of magic, known as sympathy (a more "scientific" system with known rules and theorems and all the trappings of an academic discipline) and naming (the more mysterious, truly "magical" system, akin to the concept of "true names" seen across the fantasy genre), respectively. In each of these settings, Kvothe faces hardship and loss, but manages to scrape by in each of his adventures through his ingenuity and determination. 

It is worth noting here that the book does not have much of a formal ending; it simply goes on, from one adventure in Kvothe's life to the next, until the pages run out, with the justification from the frame story that Kote the innkeeper has been telling the tale well into the night and is now going to bed. This does not seriously impact my rating of the book, but it is important to point out that it does not work well as a standalone novel, instead being clearly one part of a larger whole.

 

Review: The Wind Howls

Kvothe's story in this volume is fundamentally one of a very talented young man running into trouble after trouble, to which in response he either rises to the challenge or does his best to get by while still surviving. Many times this trouble finds him, but just as often he is literally running into it, rather purposely and usually stubbornly against good counsel, for better or worse. This brings us to something that really must be addressed first and foremost in the review.

Kvothe comes across as being good at everything, which in the hands of a lesser writer could easily ruin him as a character. Pat Rothfuss is fortunately quite a skilled writer, and Kvothe is not quite good at everything, so much as he is good at almost everything he tries and good at absorbing information. The astute among you might note that functionally there seems like very little difference here, and you would be right, but it matters because what Kvothe chooses to apply his considerable knack for learning toward shapes who he becomes as a character across the story. While there can be little doubt even early into the novel that Kvothe will easily pick up whatever subjects he pursues, it is at least worthwhile that he does grow and develop by pursuing specific paths of study (in education and in his life), gaining skills, knowledge, and most importantly perspectives that he previously lacked. 

Even still, the character might be ruined if not for the fact that the enormous ego which accompanies his talent, an unsurprising flaw in a child who knows he is talented from early childhood and is never reliably told otherwise, is almost as often a source of his troubles as his skills and talents are the solution to those problems. And because of this ego, along with the cruel whims of fate, he does face real losses that have significant impacts on his life, and he makes many poor decisions that can hardly be called perfect. So, although his "good at everything" status can still be frustrating to the reader, it is in the same way that one might be frustrated at a real person with a large ego and the skills to back it up who still makes mistakes nonetheless. As a result, he does not come across as simply a vehicle for wish fulfillment, and it is possible to be invested in his struggles and to hope that he improves on the flaws of his personality to avoid some of those struggles in the future. The main issue I have with Kvothe's dominant personality is that he absolutely dominates the focus of the narrative, leaving other characters, who are fine enough with their own quirks and flaws and merits, to phase in and out of relevance to the plot depending on how much they are supporting Kvothe's personal story at any given moment. This is, I suspect, rather the point, as the novel's conceit is that Kvothe tells his own story, but if one does not happen to like Kvothe, then the other characters are going to have a hard time carrying the novel without him (which is not to say the book has nothing else to recommend it; with or without Kvothe, it still retains its setting and all the accompanying worldbuilding, for one thing).

I've now spent three paragraphs on the protagonist, but Kvothe matters enough to warrant this, as a character, as narrator, and as more than narrator, as storyteller, because above all, above its world and above its characters, The Name of the Wind is a story about storytelling. Kvothe tells the story himself through the frame story, he is the son of a storyteller, and he encounters other storytellers throughout his travels, each with their own stories to tell. Over and over again, what is stressed about these stories is their unreliability, shifting and changing as they are passed on from person to person over time, until only kernels of truth remain. Even the greater antagonists lurking in the background of the book tie into this, as their only direct actions in the plot are to the effect of preventing the spread of certain stories. This is a book that understands storytelling, and if nothing else, putting an ego like Kvothe's in charge of relating his own story guarantees that it will be exciting and bombastic in the telling.

And exciting it is. The novel covers a variety of scenarios as it takes its protagonist from a life on the roads to one spent begging in the streets and finally to one navigating the factionalism and intrigue of the University, all while expanding on the lore of the world and working in a healthy dose of action, as well. It also includes its fair share of romantic subplot, but this is one area that I cannot praise without reservation. It is not exactly handled unrealistically given the nature of its protagonist, but Kvothe's affection for his main love interest, Denna, is of the sort that goes nowhere and is quite transparently not likely ever to reach a happy ending, leading to it feeling like little more than a plot device to advance the narrative in certain segments (my final judgement must be reserved for later, but it stands as valid for this first book on its own). More compelling is Kvothe's comparably strong passion for music, which runs throughout the narrative and directly influences both the plot and his development as a character.

For all Kvothe's talents and escapades and growth, though, he still faces loss, sometimes very tragic loss, and the novel does not shy away from detailing these grim situations and the heavy toll they take on the young protagonist. This acts as a necessary counterbalance to his successes, reminding the reader that Kvothe is far from infallible or invincible, and even when he comes out on top in the end, it is not without scars. To put it another way, while there may be happy moments in the course of the narrative, Kvothe's story, once it really gets going, does not have a very happy beginning, and shows few signs of reaching a happy ending. The question implicit in the frame, how a legendary prodigy was reduced to a humble innkeeper, hangs heavy over all of young Kvothe's triumphs, and this sense of foreboding is never too far from his successes to remind the reader that the wind whose name Kvothe seeks is often the bringer of storms.

Conclusion

My main takeaway from The Name of the Wind was that it was one of the few stories I have read that effectively uses a protagonist who at times feels overpowered to remind the reader that despite this, said protagonist is one individual living in an entire world of injustice, and consequently he faces not just personal conflicts but conflict born of the systematic forces of the society and world he lives in. As the story is set up so that we know that Kvothe eventually fades into obscurity and legend, it is all but inevitable that no matter how far he climbs, he is eventually going to run into a brick wall that he cannot climb over, burrow under, or smash through. The limit on his power is as yet hypothetical, but we know in advance that it exists, and this makes his rapid advancement in skill and knowledge much more palatable. In the meantime, we get to enjoy seeing his talent blossom in a truly engaging fantasy world under an impressive variety of different scenarios, dealing with everything from debt to dragons, and while it is an incomplete ride, it is most certainly a fun one.

I give The Name of the Wind 4.5 silver talents out of 5