Books

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicle #1)The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Prior to buying „Name of the Wind“, I had never heard about this book. I just stood in the bookstore and needed something to read and thought “okay, the description sounds interesting”.
It took me three weeks on and off reading to get into the book, for the simple reason that I was quite busy and had a little bit of trouble to understand the vocabularies. But after the first 150 pages, I grew accustomed to most new words and the story got more thrilling.

The book started from a third-point of view in which we were introduced to Kvothe, his follower and chronicler. The latter is a guest of Kvothe and persuades him to tell him the story of his earlier life. One should note that they only have a total of three days on their hands, so Kvothe starts to talk. Each book of Patrick Rothfuss’ trilogy represents one day of storytelling. So, the first book is all about Kvothes childhood and youth.

All starts with a young boy who moves around with his parents who are troupers. He has his private teacher life and a worriless life. Until unknown people kill his entire fellowship. Under shock and being aimless, he ends at the bottom of the society. Three years later he starts his steep way up. He makes his childhood dream come true and starts to study at the university.

The author presents his main character as an inquisitive young man with a great talent of nearly everything. So, Kvothe is successful in playing music, practicing science and carrying weight. At this point, most books start to get not believable. But Rothfuss is able to achieve a balance and gives his character a slight arrogance which causes him to make mistakes.
Also the other characters are described to arouse interest in the reader and keep them caught up in Kvothe’s world. A world that is a bit comparable to medieval times.

After a rough start I really enjoyed reading the book. Patrick Rothfuss’ writing style is clean and without flourishes. It doesn’t feel as if he had problems to create almost 800 sites of storytelling and so I’m looking for the next two sequels.

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