Times are bad, as bad as anyone can remember. The owner of the Waystone Inn, a young man named Kote and his assistant Bast, have been in Newarre for about a year—newcomers, by all accounts, and outsiders. Kote knows about the world, the wider world, but he rarely says anything to his customers. He doesn’t need to. Three tax levies to support an endless war, deserters and bandits on the roads who make travel dangerous, a dead king, and now demons in the woods—giant black spiders with razor-sharp claws, spiders the size of a wagon wheel....and it’s autumn. Winter is going to be hard, agree all the men who gather at the Waystone, drinking, commiserating, and telling stories.
Into Newarre, poor isolated Newarre in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere, a professional scribe called Chronicler comes chasing a rumor. He finds a legend, a legend that is most unwilling to be found. Once found, the legend doesn’t want to talk.
“They say you never existed,” Chronicler corrected gently.
Kote shrugged nonchalantly, his smile fading an imperceptible amount.
Sensing weakness, Chronicler continued. “Some stories paint you as little more than a red-handed killer.”
“I’m that too.” Kote turned to polish the counter behind the bar. He shrugged again, not as easily as before. “I’ve killed men and things that were more than men. Every one of them deserved it.”
Chronicler shook his head slowly. “The stories are saying ‘assassin,’ not ‘hero.’ Kvothe the Arcane and Kvothe Kingkiller are two very different men.”
Kote stopped polishing the bar and turned his back to the room. He nodded once without looking up.
“Some are even saying there is a new Chandrian. A fresh terror in the night. His hair as red as the blood he spills.”
“The important people know the difference,” Kote said as if he were trying to convince himself, but his voice was weary and despairing, without conviction.
Chronicler give a small laugh. “Certainly. For now. But you of all people should realize how thin the line is between the truth and compelling lie. Between history and an entertaining story.” Chronicler gave his words a minute to sink in. “You know which will win, given time.” (48-49)
Reluctantly Kvothe agrees to tell his story, the true story that Chronicler will carry back to the world to ensure that monstrousness doesn’t overtake Kvothe’s legacy. But it will be on his terms: he needs three full days to tell his life’s tale properly. With darkness closing in all around, literally and metaphorically, Kvothe begins:
“I’ve never told this story before, and I doubt I’ll ever tell it again.” Kvothe leaned forward in his chair. “Before we begin, you must remember that I am of the Edema Ruh. We were telling stories before Caluptena burned. Before there were books to write in. Before there was music to play. When the first fire kindled, we Ruh were there spinning stories in the circle of its flickering light.”
The innkeeper nodded to the scribe. “I know your reputation as a great collector of stories and recorder of events.” Kvothe’s eyes became hard as flint, sharp as broken glass. “That said, do not presume to change a word of what I say. If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way.” (56)
True stories seldom take the straightest way. Kvothe’s tale wanders and strays, and that’s the charm. It’s also part of the point.
Kvothe is born into a troupe of traveling entertainers, the Edema Ruh, the son of a famed bard and his beautiful wife. The Ruh are rather like gypsies, or rather, Rom nobility, because the Ruh are professionals, honest performers, unlike the bands of thieves and criminals who pretend to be Ruh and have destroyed the Ruh’s reputation. Like any marginalized group, they have a public face and a private one, as well as wisdom and culture shared only among their own. That sense of public face versus private reality , as well as the relationship between truth and reputation, permeates Kvothe’s autobiography, and both are worth keeping in mind while reading The Name of the Wind.
We don’t know why Kvothe is hiding in a backwoods town, although there are hints that he has good reason for assuming a new name and identity (the fact that his nickname is Kingkiller is a clue). We know as little about Bast, his student and friend; his identity comes out fairly quickly, but his motivations remain obscure. We know why Chronicler is there—he’s chasing a story, but quickly he realizes he’s out of his depth. Chronicler is not without resources, but he doesn’t have a feel for his companions. For instance, when he challenges Bast, a fight ensues, a fight which Kvothe breaks up.
Something about the low intensity of Kvothe’s voice broke the stare between them. And when they turned to look at him it seemed that someone very different was standing behind the bar. The jovial innkeeper was gone, and in his place stood someone dark and fierce.
He’s so young, Chronicler marveled. He can’t be more than twenty-five. Why didn’t I see it before? He could break me in his hands like a kindling stick. How did I ever mistake him for an innkeeper, even for a moment?
Then he saw Kvothe’s eyes. They had deepened to a green so dark they were nearly black. This is who I came to see, Chronicler thought to himself, this is the man who counseled kings and walked old roads with nothing but his wit to guide him. This is the man whose name has become both praise and curse at the University. (103-104)
A man in hiding—in hiding, we learn, even from himself—a man of uncommon intellect and even more uncommon gifts, constructing the tale of his life. If ever a situation screamed unreliable narrator, this is it. Even so, who among us isn’t the hero of our own story? How would we each render the story of our life, except unreliably?
This doesn’t mean that Kvothe sets out to deceive his listener or to build a myth. For one thing, he’s already done the myth-building thing and is done with it. Chronicler has applied pressure in his one weak spot: as in his defense of his people the Edema Ruh, for himself Kvothe wants the lies winnowed from the truths. He doesn’t want or need to be loved; he doesn’t need to be justified and he doesn’t want to tell his story, which makes him a strangely reliable unreliable narrator.
Still, the question remains: who is best qualified to appraise the truth of one’s own life? Biographers gather up the marginalia of an individual’s life in order to reconstruct events and impose on them meaning. Autobiography is often just as much an act of constructed reality as biography or history—what’s different is who gets the power to tell. Where The Name of the Wind is concerned, reviewers often make the autobiographical aspect of the novel the focus, and Kvothe’s constructed reality a deception. I’m not so convinced; the character Kvothe is trying his best to tell an honest tale, and his recitations of failures small and large, as well as his successes that are more accidental than planned, bespeak an uncommon and uncommonly brutal self-analysis.
I’m not going to give away much of the plot, which covers the first three-quarters of Kvothe’s life, his childhood and a big chunk of his education. The book is really a construct of stories within stories, layered upon one another, all told by a troubadour and shot through with humor and delightful gems. Abenthy, Kvothe’s first mentor, the first man he meets who knows the wind’s name, threatens a stodgy town official by saying, “I’ll turn you into butter on a summer day. I’ll turn you into a poet with the soul of a priest.” If ever there were a metaphor for crabbed frustration, it would be a poet with the soul of a priest. And Rothfuss is just getting warmed up.
Kvothe’s story is one with a great many twists, cruelties and reversals of fortune—as any good story would be. In fact, it’s hard to isolate just what it is that makes The Name of the Wind unique. The world-building is deep and deeply realized, although a few parts are adapted rather too closely from existing cultures for my comfort (if I can recognize its real-world source, it’s not very well disguised, and the illusion of a coherent secondary world is broken). There’s a wide cross-section of kingdoms and cultures, vivid portrayals of hungry peasants, cheating shopkeepers, corrupt officials, uncaring gentry, pendantic professors, bullies and entitled, cruel classmates, and more. More rarely, decent kind people who give aid and comfort without expecting recompense. Even the tertiary characters are fleshed-out and real-seeming, and Kvothe attends to the sounds and smells and little details of his world, just the way a master storyteller would. No, it’s not the plot or any of the devices that set Rothfuss’ work apart and above almost everyone else publishing today; in part it’s the juxtaposition of tales within their frames, asides within stories within digressions within an oral history told in an inn in autumn. And in no small measure it’s due to the superiority of the writing—Rothfuss has as exquisite an ear as he has discerning an eye for detail.
A great many novels are entertaining; their plots are clever interlocking Rube Goldberg machines impressive in their creativity. They clack and tick along and end with a satisfying ta-da! But you couldn’t say they were particularly well-written. Others are mood-pieces, rather like tone poems—impressionistic and haunting, strong on language, weak on plot.
And then there are the novels that hit the sweet spot—discursive and meandering, spell-binding and extraordinarily entertaining. Rothfuss is a master of narrative, skilled at description and nuance. He’s even mastered that most difficult of poetic forms—the lyric—and shares it generously throughout The Name of the Wind.
Every page is a pleasure. Rothfuss’ fans are devoted and resolute, with reason. This is the kind of book that’ll turn you into an annoyance among your friends. You’ll buttonhole acquaintances and say, “Just listen to this—“ And then you’ll read passages like this:
I set my fingers back to the strings and fell deep into myself. Into years before, when my hands had calluses like stones and my music had come as easy as breathing. Back to the time I had played to make the sound of Wind Turning a Leaf on a lute with six strings.
And I began to play. Slowly, then with greater speed as my hands remembered. I gathered the fraying strands of song and wove them carefully back to what they had been a moment earlier.
It was not perfect. No song as complex as “Sir Savien” can be played perfectly on six strings instead of seven. But it was whole, and as I played the audience sighed, stirred, and slowly fell back under the spell that I had made for them.
I hardly knew they were there, and after a minute I forgot them entirely. My hands danced, then ran, then blurred across the strings as I fought to keep the lute’s two voices singing with my own….
And then it was done. Raising my head to look at the room was like breaking the surface of the water for air. I came back into myself, found my hand bleeding and my body covered in sweat. Then the ending of the song struck me like a fist in my chest, as it always does, no matter where or when I listen to it. (403)
The strength of Kvothe’s voice more than makes up for an as-yet-unfinished plot that leaves a great many strings dangling. If you’re looking for an event-driven novel, keep looking. If you want the story behind the story, if you want a tale told for its own sake, you will love it. I have my own quibbles with the book—the sprinkling of barely-adapted settings is one. But primarily, I think it’s a flaw that Kvothe’s voice doesn’t match his age. He speaks as an older, more mature man, not a twenty-five year old who laughs at his two companions (both older than he) and chides them for being so young. And it’s annoying that he has an uncanny talent for alienating the very people whose help he most needs, but that could be part of the unreliable narrator construction—for Kvothe’s tale (it’s easy to forget) is one that he consciously crafts for Chronicler to record, and as he himself says, “You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”
Also, and not to be forgotten, most of my objections can be chalked up to the unfinished nature of the narrative. One story—three days. The Name of the Wind is day one.
Almost buried under the architecture, seeded in hints, is the central mystery of the Chandrian. Educated people dismiss the Chandrian as demonic figures of folktale, but Kvothe knows better. Indeed, moving behind the events of his life, the Chandrian seem to lurk, just out of sight, just out of reach. Kvothe’s investigations, as well as his education and apprenticeship, in large measure are driven by his need to know about the Chandrian, his quest to defeat them. It’s a quest that starts in The Name of the Wind and continues through the second novel, The Wise Man’s Fear, one that may, just may, be answered in Rothfuss’ third novel, currently in progress.
These books are not stand-alones. You need to read them in order. As compelling as the main narrative is, despite characters like Willem and Ambrose, Auri and Elodin, in my mind I keep returning to the frame of the story—the Waystone Inn and the darkness gathering. Something terrible is closing in; Chronicler senses it dimly, Bast more explicitly—in fact, Bast may well be the force moving behind events, and he has specific reasons for it. And Kvothe, who is introduced as a man doomed, a man waiting to die...if he can be shake off whatever trauma it was that turned him into an innkeeper in an obscure nowhere in time to meet that darkness—well, as the storytellers say, third time is the charm.
The Wise Man’s Fear is published by DAW Book, and available everywhere. Pat Rothfuss has a great blog and does serious Good Work in the world. This is a book you should not borrow, but buy. You’ll want to read it more than once.
Nota Bene: Angmar has gathered together disparate Science Fiction and Fantasy primary resources. It’s well worth a bookmark for future reading.
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