Book Thread: VGChartz gotta start readin'!

[Doobie_wop]

haxxiy said:

Doobie_wop said:

I've just finished reading the 'The Wise Mans Fear', which is the sequel to 'The Name of the Wind'. I'm telling everyone right now, go and borrow or buy this book, don't wait, don't dawdle, just get it and read it, because I can honestly say it's one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written. Read them both, come back, scream about how satisfied you are and then maybe we can finally discuss the greatness of the best fiction novels written in the last ten years and how it's author is a demi God of literacy.

Come the hell on. I respect the fact people have different opinions about different stuff and I'm well aware of the (few) flaws of the books I prefer myself, but calling Rothfuss a demi God of literacy made my balls hurt big time.

The Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear had both their merits, but their flaws become glaring after a closer. A lot of characters feel likecardboard cutouts, the story copies main points of other successful novels as a cheap attempt to give itself more visibility, description lost in useless stuff - almost zero (adequate) worldbuilding but a lot of attempts to give characterization through small actions that become annoying after some time. A writer should make it pretty clear how a character is feeling by it's dialogue, no need for detalied descriptions of frowning or shrugging and on and on and on. We are not idiots, mr. Rothfuss. We get it, alright?

Not to mention Kvothe himself, how weak as a character he actually is, besides having a dodgy name to say at least. Someone should forbid fantasy authors of using impossible consonant combinations or rand'omly pla'cing apo'stroph'es on words.

But anyways I appreciate the sense of forward movement of these books, it reminds me a bit of Chronicles of the Black Company (maybe I shouldn't mention CotBC in the same sentence as NotW and WMF after everything I said, but I'll say it anyways for the sake of anyone who enjoyed these books).

Hyberbole on my part. I mentioned a few problems I had with the book later on. I still think his the best fantasy author that we have today and most of flaws you mentioned are either small in the grand schemes or small in comparison to the many glaring faults that I've found in fantasy novels written between 1990 and today. I like that Patrick is trying to break the standard fantasy mold (a few other new authors are helping as well).