Patrick Rothfuss' fantasy novel The Name of the Wind ends as it begins: with a "silence of three parts." Well, this week at WIRED Book Club, we're a pandemonium of five parts. No two readers had the same impression of the book—we range from frustration to elation, united only by an eagerness to discuss. Did Rothfuss fall victim to lazy fantasy tropes, or is he smarter than us all? In advance of our conversation with the man himself next week, we pick apart our feelings below. As always, join us in the comments, and look out for the announcement for next month's selection. Hint: It's the opposite of Rothfuss—sci-fi, and women are in charge.
So?
Lexi Pandell, Assistant Research Editor: By the end of the book, I was surprised by two things. First, how little of Kvothe's story we actually got through in 700 pages. Second, by how the book actually felt like a pretty quick read despite its length. Someone asked me earlier this week if I'd recommend The Name of the Wind, and my response was basically: Enough people are crazy hooked on this series that I think it's worth giving it a go and seeing whether it's for you. It's also culturally important enough that I think it's worth reading to be a part of the conversation.
Jay Dayrit, Editorial Operations Manager: Totally agreed! Looks epic from the outside but doesn't feel like it by the end. As one coworker said, "It's the world's longest setup." True, but what a setup it is! By the time I got to the final quarter of the book, I realized the arc was neither rise-fall-rise nor fall-rise-fall but rather a series of smaller rises and falls that, once you pull back, make for a rather even-keeled narrative. OK, his time in Tarbean was a pretty hard fall, but I never felt that downward trajectory was irreversible. His second tribunal, on the other hand, had me really worried there.
Pandell: Rothfuss is a master at planting little seeds that kept me reading. Even at the lowest points in that Tarbean section, for example, I knew I could look forward to Kvothe making it out and getting to the University. And, now that we've wrapped up the book, we know we can look forward to discovering the reason for Kvothe's downfall and where in the world these scraelings came from and whether his parents were killed by the Chandrian and what the name of the wind really is and what will happen between Kvothe and Denna and ... phew! I could go on, but I'll spare you all.
Who's your favorite character?
Dayrit: The draccus when it's tripping balls! I'm kidding. Sort of. Made for an action-packed section. I want to say Denna, who gets more believable and charming during their hunt for the source of the blue fire. I liked that Kvothe seems genuinely happy for her when she tells him she has found a patron, possibly even a love interest, and Kvothe gets relegated to the friend zone, which is a much more interesting space for a character to occupy. But then Denna becomes a serial dater, and Rothfuss slips back into his problematic representation of women.
Sarah Fallon, Senior Editor: I'm really loving Bast right now. That speech at the end. Wow. If Chronicler makes Kvothe sad his "brief mortal span will be an orchestra of misery."
Dayrit: Oh, yeah! Me too. And apparently, he's in love with Kvothe. "I just want my Reshi back." My Reshi? What? You know there's some fan fiction out there exploring that scenario.
Fallon: Yes, so sad and soft after being full of such white fire. No such thing as demons. Only his kind. And he smells of flowers. I've been wondering if I want to see this as a movie. Now I realize that I want to see it as an opera.
Jason Kehe, Associate Editor: Such romantics! Obviously the best character is Elodin. I imagine his memoirs, if they exist, are called Barefoot and Brilliant. I just get a huge stupid childish Elodin-esque grin on my face every time he shows up (usually out of nowhere) to perform some breathtaking act of magic, wink, and dance away, crazy-eyed, on the wind. Seriously, though, even in real life, these are the kind of people I truly look up to and kinda wish to be like one day. People who know so much about the world, too much, that they eventually break through to some higher consciousness, a plane of existence that only looks bizarre to us less enlightened souls. People who can do whatever they want and are left alone in their unselfconscious splendor.
Fallon: Isn't he the unbroken adult version of Kvothe? The one who you only see on stage, dramatically appearing and disappearing. The one who doesn't break the fourth wall (as Kvothe is doing)?
Katie M. Palmer, Senior Associate Editor: From a purely "I wanna hang out with you" place, I love Kilvin. He seems genuinely caring and smart and funny and wise in a way that can only come from almost-dying lots and lots of times. Plus, I can't wait to find out how the Chandrian's blue flame is somehow informed by his artificery work and the quest to find an ever-burning lamp.
Pandell: I'm incredibly charmed by the mysterious Auri. And, like Jason, I'm very fond of Elodin. For some reason, I imagine that he looks a bit like Neil Gaiman. Am I the only one who feels this way? I can't be. Anyway, he's one of the few characters that Kvothe thinks he can learn from ... and one of the few who has been able to outwit our dear fiery-haired MC. Maybe Elodin will be the one to tame the ego that we've all seemed to bristle at a bit. Hopefully without making Kvothe jump off any more roofs.
Does Rothfuss redeem the role of women?
Pandell: I love Devi and Fela when they're being badass, enterprising, intelligent ladies. But I love Devi a little less when she's checking out Kvothe, insinuating that she might be willing to exchange sex for some of his debt, and Fela a lot less when she's playing damsel in distress, clutching her bedsheet to her ample bosom when Kvothe drops by her room. I want to see more of both of them in the second book because I think they have promise as interesting characters. Let's see if Rothfuss can turn them around for me.
Fallon: I, for one, would like to retract my previous comments about the women in this book all being nothing but single-serving plot points. I feel bad! Denna is trying to navigate a world where she has to choose between selling it and having it taken from her. Deoch spells that all out for Kvothe ... and for readers too, in case they need reminding. Oh, and I'm especially a bitch because Deoch even says to Kvothe that women hate her on account of she's so pretty and charming. So I guess that was me for the first half. I regret the jerk I used to be. Now I'm just charmed by her judge-y postscript in her note to Kvothe.
Kehe: But the fact remains that this is still a massively male-dominated society. Why is that? It's confusing to me why fantasy, surely the genre furthest away from reality, so often reinforces our own social and cultural norms. Give young girls a female Master, at the very least! Elodin would be a GREAT woman. Then his/her craziness becomes more complicated. Does she snap because—like Ophelia, driven to madness (and then into the brook) by the animadversions of cruel, controlling men—she's ultimately not allowed to be extraordinary?
Palmer: Yes: I think I'm going to pull an Ann Leckie and just read book two as if Elodin is a woman. But still, I'm heartened by the fact that this is book one, and Kvothe is still very young in these stories. As he keeps reminding us, he's not very experienced with the ladies, and I hope that after conversations like the one he has with Deoch and spending more time with Fela in the Archives that his outlook expands.
What's wrong with Kote?
Dayrit: I suspect it isn't anything physical. Something happened between Kvothe's time at the University and at the Waystone, a traumatic enough event to adversely affect his ability to use sympathy. It's no coincidence that quite a few of the magical techniques in The Name of the Wind are inspired by emotional states of being. So it stands to reason that if an arcanist's emotional well-being suffers, so does their ability to practice magic. Is it any wonder why the University invests so heavily in their mental health facilities?
Pandell: My sense is that his use of magic backfired at some point and he lost someone he loved—Denna, perhaps? Losing her seems like one of the only things that would break him even more than his parents' murder, which we all know stunted his ability to use sympathy. Theirs seems to be a love destined for tragedy, just like Savien and Aloine.
Palmer: Co-sign to losing (slash hurting) the one you love. It is a book of very-slightly-subverted tropes, after all. Which, actually: What if it's Denna who hurts Kvothe? Does something so horrific to him that he loses control of his sympathy?
What's the point of The University?
Pandell: OK, OK, hear me out on this one. Generally, the point of any place of higher education is to disseminate knowledge to the next generation and to train and prepare students for the real world. Still, the University in this series confounds me. The magic they teach seems incredibly dangerous and plenty of their students do seem to be using what they learned for dark purposes. At Hogwarts, for example, students are only admitted if they show magical ability, something they're born with and need to learn to control. Such magic doesn't seem like an innate ability for the characters in this book. The question I'm trying to get at is: What is the real goal of the University? I'm not sure that passing down knowledge outweighs the harm that their students could inflict. So are the Masters lying in wait for the signs of a foretold hero? Or perhaps secretly training the next generation to battle some unrevealed villain(s)? There has to be something else at play here ... right?
So will you read the second book?
Pandell: One thousand more pages, here we come! I'm in.
Palmer: I feel a little cheated into wanting to read book two. At the end, what parts of Kvothe's mythology, laid out in the beginning of his story, have we actually unraveled? One: that he slayed a "dragon." I'm monumentally satisfied by the telling of that one myth, but I feel like we haven't touched the best mysteries—this whole book was character development, and I'm kind of annoyed by the lack of a concrete ending. We get a conclusion to the story of the draccus, and it's assumed that now we've checked it off, we'll keep going just to understand exactly how Kvothe has massaged the truth of his other stories. Not that it didn't work—I'm totally going to read.
Dayrit: I'm on the fence. There are certainly enough unanswered questions to compel me to commit to that page count. Like what does Kvothe really learn from Elodin, aside from how to act cartoonish, like some wizard from Fantasia? (That's right, Jason, I don't agree with you on Elodin being the best character!) How's Denna's love life? Is she alive at all? Is there some interspecies hoof-knockin' between Bast and Kvothe? But Kote's reconstruction of the ever-so-clever Kvothe is hard for me to hang with for such a long time. However, I must admit, I was impressed by Bast's, and ultimately Rothfuss', justification of that perfect presentation: "It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story." Clearly, Kvothe needs to build himself back up again, whether he's aware of that effort or not. Maybe I just need more balance between the past and present. If there are a lot more giant spiders and undead mercenaries, I'm in! You guys start, and let me know. I'll meet you at the Waystone tavern, armed with an iron. Should work, right?
