The Name Of The Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day 1)

Written by: Patrick Rothfuss

When I bought this book, I had no clue what I was buying. All I knew was that someone at Amazon had decided that it was going to be the next Harry Potter.

Basically, that was enough for me. (That and the fact that it was relatively cheap and I had a gift code for Amazon.)

Well, they were partly right. It is the story of a young boy at a school that teaches a sort of magic. But I wouldn’t give this book to your average nine-year-old. It’s pretty mature for a kid. Some cursing and sexual innuendo.

Which, of course, makes me like it even more. But that’s beside the point.

The story starts off with Kote, a middle-aged innkeeper who doesn’t suffer fools. But is he really who he seems?

I’ll go ahead and answer that right now since it’s answered within the first couple of chapters. No. He isn’t. He’s actually Kvothe (pronounced quothe), the Kingkiller. There are stories about Kvothe across the land. He killed a demon just by looking at him. He had 1000s of women, all of whom fell head over heels in love with him. And, believe me, if he were here he would consume the English with lightning bolts from his eyes and fire from his arse.

As it is, though, he is just a man. Sure, that man knows some magic that is pretty impressive, but he is still just a man. And he wants to set the story straight. So, when a scribe named, appropriately enough, Chronicler comes into his bar, he makes a deal with him. Three days and he will tell his entire story. After that, he must leave him alone.

This book is the first day of those stories. It takes young Kvothe from his carefree days on the road with his highly respected acting troupe family to the sad and rough days after they are killed by a supposedly mythical band of demons to his time at the University where he starts to learn about Sympathy and, possibly, the Names Of All Things.

Patrick Rothfuss (who, strangely, is NOT British…he actually lives in central Wisconsin) is not quite JK Rowling, but he has created a very interesting world full of great, believable characters. Kvothe himself is enough to make me want to read the rest of the series when it comes out. But he’s surrounded by other characters that I loved spending time with. From his boyhood friends, Simmon and Wilem who support him no matter what kind of trouble he gets himself into, to his teachers who, in what little time they are actually in the book, make a pretty big impression. (Especially Master Elodin, who knows the Names Of All Things…but it seems to have driven him quite mad. “We are friends, you may call me by my first name: Master.”)

My favorite character (besides Kvothe) is Denna. Like Eilonwy of Prydain, she is strong and smart. But there is even more to her than just that. Kvothe is horribly in love with her, but he feels that he can never have her. She seems to belong to so many men. She’s not much older than him (he is, at 15, the youngest student at the University), but she has years of experience on him. She is the unattainable female that all young men have fallen for at some point in their lives. He knows that she is wrong for him in just about every way, but they are such good friends that he can’t bring himself to either tell her how he feels or break things off completely with her. Their adventure together with the draccus is one of the best parts of the book. (“Look at the big goddamn dragon!”)

Even more than a love story of an adventure story, this is a book about stories. Kvothe became such a mythical and mystical character in this world that no one knew the truth. And when he disappeared, he took all of those stories with him. There’s a part where a bunch of his regulars come in telling Kvothe stories, completely getting everything wrong. But, from the story that Kvothe is telling Chronicler, we can see where all of their stories came from. And, while it seems about time that someone set it all straight, is it maybe not better to have a hero who can do all of these amazing things that Kvothe seems to be able to do? I guess we’ll find out by the end of the third book.

I loved this book. I didn’t suck me in quite as much as a Harry Potter book does, but it’s Rothfuss’ first novel. Even JK took a couple of books to really do that. (It was the third in that series that finally fully grabbed me.) By the second day, maybe he will be just as good.

Either way, I can’t wait to see what happens to Kvothe and all of his friends.