So, I've finished reading The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. That book has been waiting in my archive for a long time. I've tried reading it a few months ago but I forced to put it down just after finishing 2-3 chapters. If you didn't noticed from my previous posts, I was kind of struggling with the Sanderson sickness at that time.
As you know or guess, it takes some time to get familiar with a book, especially if that is a fantasy book. Immersing yourself in a world that doesn't exist requires some time and patient, it usually takes 50 to 100 pages of reading to have some basic idea about what's going on. This can be even more demanding if your mind is wondering some other places while you're reading, like the temptation of "
why don't just read another Sanderson's book?"...
Luckily, The Name of The Wind is not a hard book to read. It doesn't throw unpronounceable names, complicated magic systems, unfamiliar animals/plants, demons, dragons at you from the first page (not like the fricking The Way Of Kings, urrrggghhh, even pronouncing the name of the main protagonist correctly took me like 200 pages). In addition to that, Patrick Rothfuss has a beautiful writing style, his every word is picked neatly, its like there was no other word to put there, no other word but the one Patrick used could catch the intended meaning. They flow like a river, very fluent. You don't stumble, you don’t stagger... I have to admit, The Name Of The Wind has one the best writing I have ever read. One can keep reading that book just for that.
Apart from its poetic writing style, it doesn’t show much similarity to other high fantasy books. There is not a catastrophic event that's about the destroy everything. There’s not a man or woman who changes the fate of the world all by him-herlself. We don’t see a OP hero. Actually the hero is pretty down to earth type of a guy. Of course he has his strengths, and differences, but not in an exaggerated way. I would assume, more or less it’s like Harry Potter, but I can’t be sure since I haven’t read Harry Potter.
Long story short, The Name of The Wind is a beautiful piece of art. It's a must read if you have any interest in fantasy, or literature maybe. The only downside is Patrick takes his time before publishing a book, like George RR Martin. The Name of The Wind is the first book of a series called The Kingkiller Chronicle, it was published in 2007, and Patrick’s second book, The Wise Man’s Fear (which I’m reading at the moment) was published in 2011. And finally, the last book of the series, Doors of Stone will be published in 2017… In other words, I’ll have to wait almost 2 years to read the last book after finishing the current one. And this is another reason why I had Sanderson sickness in the first place… Guy publishes 2 books per year, and lots of novellas.
PROLOGUE
A Silence of Three Parts
IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn's sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music... but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.
Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.
The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.
The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn's ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.