# The Wise Man's Fear (Patrick Rothfuss), anyone?



## dpinmd (Dec 30, 2009)

I don't see any threads about this book, but I can't possibly be the only KB member who pre-ordered this book and started reading it right after its release! I am about 33% into it -- torn between wanting to devour it and wanting to savor it, after waiting so long for the next installment in the trilogy! So far, I think it's every bit as good as _The Name of the Wind_. I won't give away any spoilers, but it felt like "coming home" to pick up with Kote, Bast, and the Chronicler, and Kvothe and his friends, right where we left off. And the writing is, again, beautiful -- I've highlighted so many passages that I know I'll want to go back to again and again just to appreciate the language!

So who else is reading this? And what do you think? (I balked at the price for Kindle, but was so anxious to read this book that I broke my usual rule of not spending more than $9.99 -- and I have not a single regret for doing so!)


----------



## Seleya (Feb 25, 2011)

I'm looking forward to reading it, but I admit that on seeing the price I almost fell off my chair. I think I'll wait for the price to come down a bit.
In the meanwhile I've bought the kindle edition of 'the Name of the Wind' to read it again (the paper version was a monster no way it could fit into my purse).


----------



## ginaf20697 (Jan 31, 2009)

I'm reading it though I made sure I got it from the library.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I'm reading it, but only about 15% into it so far -- too much else going on in my life at the moment.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

I read "Name of the Wind" just a couple of months ago and liked it a lot.  I have enough to read on my Kindle as I wait for the price to fall to what I consider to be a reasonable amount for an ebook.  (Which would be $9.99)


----------



## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Oh man, yes. I loved _The Name of the Wind_. Been waiting for the next one, what, just shy of _four years_. I've lived in three different states since then.

Which means, unfortunately, some of my books ended up in storage--including _Name of the Wind_, which I really need to reread before diving into this one. But I'm totally glad to hear _Wise Man's Fear_ is matching up. This series could wind up an instant classic.


----------



## mom133d (aka Liz) (Nov 25, 2008)

ginaf20697 said:


> I'm reading it though I made sure I got it from the library.


Good idea, I haven't even looked to see if they have it. Otherwise, I too am waiting for the price to go down. And at somepoint I need to reread _The Name of the Wind._


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

The price just dropped to $12.99 for anyone who might be interested! Maybe I will take the plunge...


----------



## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Huh.  You wouldn't think $2.00 would make that much difference, but psychologically, $12.99 just seems so much better than $14.99. 

Even if it still sucks compared to $9.99 for bestsellers.


----------



## ginaf20697 (Jan 31, 2009)

Well it is going to be #1 on the best seller list so I'm not sure if it will go to $9.99 or not


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

There is no longer a price "guarantee" that best sellers will be $9.99, unfortunately.  I'm conflicted.  It's not as if I'm hurting for something to read.  And yes, the price will fall down to $9.99...eventually.  The big question is when "eventually" is.  I'm actually surprised they dropped it to $12.99 so soon.  But my guess is this is the first and only drop in price for a long time.  Or they'll hike it up again at any minute.  Sometimes I'm puzzled by these price fluctuations.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

I broke down and bough it for $12.99.  *grumble*  No doubt this is the sort of behavior Penguin was anticipating from people with no will power like me.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

DYB said:


> I broke down and bough it for $12.99. *grumble* No doubt this is the sort of behavior Penguin was anticipating from people with no will power like me.


It *is* a pretty long book -- 1008 pages in hardback -- so looked at from the perspective of amount of entertainment per dollar, $12.99 is probably at least as good as the average $9.99 Kindle book.


----------



## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Essentially I think $12.99 is the new $9.99.  Since the agency model went into effect, I've seen very few best sellers go down to $9.99, they go from $14.99 to $12.99 if they attain bestseller status, then back up to $14.99, and then eventually in the far flung future, when paperbacks come out, they'll go down to the paperback price (roughly).


----------



## Guest (Mar 13, 2011)

I am really loving this guy.  I WILL say that this book dragged at the 3/4 mark for me... a bit.

I adored the ending.  Now I'm DYING for the next, as yet untitled book.


----------



## Seleya (Feb 25, 2011)

12.99 would have been good for me, but that edition is not available for people in Europe.
What we have available is a different Kindle edition (I wonder whether the content is different in any way) at $ 17.99


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Seleya said:


> 12.99 would have been good for me, but that edition is not available for people in Europe.
> What we have available is a different Kindle edition (I wonder whether the content is different in any way) at $ 17.99


That sucks!!!  It's not like they're paying for shipping!


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

I listened to _The Name of the Wind_ on audiobook, so I was hesitant about getting _The Wise Man's Fear_ in text format. Luckily for me, the audiobook was released along with the book, so I've been listening to it for about a week now. It is 43 hours long!

[Possible spoilers below]

I am nearly finished. Although I've enjoyed the book very much, even more than _The Name of the Wind_, there is one thing that I find a bit annoying. Kvothe can be very dim-witted sometimes! I get irritated by his desire to learn and study, but his impatience with his teachers and his short temper. Seriously dude, they even tell you "this is going to be hard, it probably won't be what you expect, you're going to be pushed to the limits, it's all part of the process" and then he still freaks out every now and then and does something stupid like yell at his teacher because she won't let him have a sword he can't use yet. And then of course, he immediately sees that he was being stupid and missed the point of the exercise and risked his life because he was so impatient. I understand that he is young and eager, but for someone supposedly clever and who knows many stories (including, presumably, the wise master/impatient student ones), he really doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes in this area.

Apart from that, it's a very enjoyable series.

For those who read the first book long ago, you can catch up on the story by reading "Our Story Thus Far...", instead of reading the entire book again.


----------



## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

I loved the first one, but I'll probably wait to pick up the sequel from the library.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

This was one of my few quibbles with the first book, too, and to an even greater extent with some other series that I've given up on: I can get easily irritated with plots being driven by stupid decisions by characters who are supposed to be smart. (Another quibble -- which also applies to too many novels -- is why every important female character is gorgeous.)



Prazzie said:


> I listened to _The Name of the Wind_ on audiobook, so I was hesitant about getting _The Wise Man's Fear_ in text format. Luckily for me, the audiobook was released along with the book, so I've been listening to it for about a week now. It is 43 hours long!
> 
> [Possible spoilers below]
> 
> ...


----------



## StaceyHH (Sep 13, 2010)

Prazzie said:


> I listened to _The Name of the Wind_ on audiobook, so I was hesitant about getting _The Wise Man's Fear_ in text format. Luckily for me, the audiobook was released along with the book, so I've been listening to it for about a week now. It is 43 hours long!


I sampled the audiobook for NotW, but couldn't hack the narrator's voice.  Maybe I'll give it a second go. I haven't read either yet, but they are on my short list - right after I finish my current library books, then Jonathan Strange, and then McCammon's Matthew Corbett series... so... sometime in May? heh.

I've heard a LOT of good buzz about these books from people who have similar reading preferences to mine.


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

StaceyHH said:


> I sampled the audiobook for NotW, but couldn't hack the narrator's voice.  Maybe I'll give it a second go.


I'm entirely with you on this one. I actually hadn't heard all the hype about _The Name of the Wind_, just read that it was like "Harry Potter for adults" and decided to listen to it. I must have tried getting into that book at least a dozen times. I had difficulty making out the words, the narrator really irked me. And the beginning of the book is kind of boring, as well. At one point I got tired of listening to the beginning over and over and decided to just grit my teeth and stick with it. Once I got into young Kvothe's story, I didn't even notice the narrator anymore.

I believe the same person read the second book, but I wouldn't have been able to say so. He sounds much younger to me, and the book was enjoyable right from the beginning. He can also do a lot of accents. I really enjoyed his voice for Tempi.

Try sticking with it until Kvothe starts telling his story proper. If you still can't deal with the narrator at that point, then rather read the text.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Prazzie said:


> I am nearly finished. Although I've enjoyed the book very much, even more than _The Name of the Wind_, there is one thing that I find a bit annoying. Kvothe can be very dim-witted sometimes! I get irritated by his desire to learn and study, but his impatience with his teachers and his short temper. Seriously dude, they even tell you "this is going to be hard, it probably won't be what you expect, you're going to be pushed to the limits, it's all part of the process" and then he still freaks out every now and then and does something stupid like yell at his teacher because she won't let him have a sword he can't use yet. And then of course, he immediately sees that he was being stupid and missed the point of the exercise and risked his life because he was so impatient. I understand that he is young and eager, but for someone supposedly clever and who knows many stories (including, presumably, the wise master/impatient student ones), he really doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes in this area.


I haven't read the new one yet, so I might end up feeling the same way. But in general something like this may not be so out of the realm of possibilities. Kvothe is not only young, but he can also be quite arrogant. Kids are always pushing the envelope in terms of what they think they can do. (Dad, can I drive a car when I'm 8? WHY NOT?! I know how to ride a bike, so why not a car?! I'm going to ask mom!) Being that he's an orphan and hasn't had real adult supervision in ages, I don't think it's out of the question that he will keep pushing and defying authority, even if it sometimes blows up in his face.


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

If I hadn't read it yet, I might cut the kid some slack too. But read it, then you'll likely want to join me in shaking him hard. 

[Possible spoilers below]

Speaking of shaking people - did anyone else get really frustrated at the scene in Adem about man-mothers? I don't know if it was supposed to be funny or to show that even civilized folk don't know everything, but I was just spluttering and going "what? Tell her, Kvothe! Draw her a picture of some fallopian tubes!"


----------



## BethRaymond (Feb 13, 2011)

I want to read it, but I also will wait for the price to drop some more. The only Kindle book that I was willing to pay over $10 for a pre-order was _A Dance with Dragons_ by George R.R. Martin. But maybe that's because I started reading his series nearly 15 years ago (so the four-year wait for the next book has been excruciating), whereas I only read _The Name of the Wind_ about six months ago.


----------



## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

NogDog said:


> This was one of my few quibbles with the first book, too, and to an even greater extent with some other series that I've given up on: I can get easily irritated with plots being driven by stupid decisions by characters who are supposed to be smart. (Another quibble -- which also applies to too many novels -- is why every important female character is gorgeous.)


This is one of my personal hangups about books with young protagonists. I mean, do you remember being a teenager? Speaking for myself, it was not an age of profound wisdom, charisma, bravado, and admirable deeds. It was a lot of mumbling and complaining and feel sorry for myself while trying to hide eight bazillion pimples from the world.

Not the stuff of great genre novels.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Joseph Robert Lewis said:


> Speaking for myself, it was not an age of profound wisdom, charisma, bravado, and admirable deeds. It was a lot of mumbling and complaining and feel sorry for myself while trying to hide eight bazillion pimples from the world.


Don't sell yourself short; you never faced mythical demons, did you? No doubt you would have stepped up to the plate with both bravado and admirable deeds under the right circumstances.

In the world of Harry Potter they had pimples, but also a magical cure (Madame Pomfrey was good.)


----------



## graffdroid (Feb 1, 2011)

Not only did I buy this book for Kindle but I also bought the hardcover because I was going to be away from my kindle for the first two days it was out. For those playing at home, yes that means I dropped $45 for this book. I actually wore out my original copy of the Name of the Wind from rereading it over and over.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

graffdroid said:


> Not only did I buy this book for Kindle but I also bought the hardcover because I was going to be away from my kindle for the first two days it was out. For those playing at home, yes that means I dropped $45 for this book. I actually wore out my original copy of the Name of the Wind from rereading it over and over.


You know you're a fan when this stuff happens!  Okay, I own the US and the UK hardcover editions of "Harry Potter," plus many expensive leather-bound Easton Press books, so I'm not judging.


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

Has enough time gone by for us to start discussing the book in earnest, spoilers and all?

Since I listened to the audiobook, I feel as though I missed a lot of tiny details. And I don't know how to spell most of the names! 



Spoiler



Nevertheless, I thought the whole bit about Meluan Lackless being Kvothe's aunt was very subtly written, yet with enough clues to convince the keen reader. I wish I picked up on this hint, but I saw this on another forum:

For all her faults I do confess
It's worth my life
To make my wife
Not tally a lot less...

That's the song Kvothe's father sang about his wife - a woman from a nobler background than himself, as you'll recall - that she didn't want him to sing. Perhaps because it gives away her real name in the last line? Netalia Lackless. Also remember that when he was young, Kvothe sang a mean song about Lady Lackless and his mother reprimanded him and asked him not to sing it. I'd like to see that aunt turn white when she realises who Kvothe really is.

The second thing that I'm convinced of is that Bredon is Denna's patron. He has a walking stick, Denna is beaten with a walking stick. He tells Kvothe he's taken to dancing, Denna says her patron is a surprisingly good dancer. And of course, the fact that Denna is there, near Bredon.

Anyone care to share any insights into the Chandrian and Bast? Especially Bast's last scene with the two soldiers. What's up with that?


----------



## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

DYB said:


> I read "Name of the Wind" just a couple of months ago and liked it a lot. I have enough to read on my Kindle as I wait for the price to fall to what I consider to be a reasonable amount for an ebook. (Which would be $9.99)


Ditto....


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Ahmmmm...very few people have read it, so


Spoiler



spoilers


 would be great!


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

DYB said:


> Ahmmmm...very few people have read it, so
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...


Sorry.

It takes about 14 hours to read the book. I listened to the 43 hour audiobook, so I figured most fans would have read it by now. Is there a thread where we can discuss the book without blocking out our posts in black?


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

14 hours to read 1000 pages?  

You should start a discussion thread about it and mention that spoilers are included.  Something like: "Wise Man's Fear Discussion Thread with Spoilers."


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

DYB said:


> 14 hours to read 1000 pages?


So I've been told. It didn't seem unusual, so I Googled to see how long it took others to read it and found this on another forum: "After a 16-hour marathon with one brief break...I finished WMF and was left bereft, demanding more and cursing the long wait for the third volume." I know my friends and I usually read eagerly awaited books in one sitting, then phone each other to discuss it, but maybe we're overly fanatical. 

It seems it would be pointless to open another Wise Man's Fear discussion thread on KB if very few people have read it. Oh well.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Prazzie said:


> So I've been told. It didn't seem unusual, so I Googled to see how long it took others to read it and found this on another forum: "After a 16-hour marathon with one brief break...I finished WMF and was left bereft, demanding more and cursing the long wait for the third volume." I know my friends and I usually read eagerly awaited books in one sitting, then phone each other to discuss it, but maybe we're overly fanatical.
> 
> It seems it would be pointless to open another Wise Man's Fear discussion thread on KB if very few people have read it. Oh well.


Maybe I'm just a slow reader. It took me about 18 hours straight to read the last Harry Potter book. But I don't normally have the time to do reading marathons. And I'm in the middle of another gargantuan book (A Game of Thrones), so this one is waiting in the wings.


----------



## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

I downloaded a sample of the _Name of the Wind _ yesterday and I must say I am impressed - it seems to be really well written. Definitely on my "to get" list.


----------



## Prazzie (Oct 25, 2009)

Hey, it made number 1 on the NYT bestseller list. Congratulations to the author, he deserves it! (Link goes to author's blog.)


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I finally had a chance to read this. In summary, I liked it a lot, though not quite as much as the first book. Part of the reason I think it slipped just a bit for me is that I was getting a bit tired of Kvothe being so good at so many things, making it both hard for me to accept him as believable and also to feel much sympathy for him when things go less than well for him. His being in the 99.999th percentile of almost everything he sets his hand to gets to be as annoying as every woman he interacts with being gorgeous. But that's just me finding something to complain about. Overall I still enjoyed it a lot. (See my full review on my blog.)


----------



## Guest (Apr 5, 2011)

If any of you follow Patrick's blog, he's a riot.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

At this point I'm 2/3 into it and it's really dragging in the middle.  The whole part with Felurian is a big snooze-fest.  It takes them about 50 pages to walk from one place to another to get shadows.  Okay, maybe 30.  Sheesh.  I'm also tired of reading just how perfect Felurian is.  Perfect arches.  Perfect hair.  Perfect skin.  Perfect arches. Perfect hair. Perfect skin. Perfect arches made for arching. Perfect hair made for butterflies to settle in. Perfect skin for something or other.  I'm skipping the whole section at this point.  Hopefully Kvothe gets out soon and does something interesting.  The book is definitely not as good as the first one, mostly because Rothfuss really gets long-winded.  But I still Kvothe and want to see what happens next. Hopefully something actually happens soon.


----------



## Ben Dobson (Mar 27, 2011)

I just recently finished Wise Man's Fear, and I'm generally a fan of the books, but this one thing annoys me so much. I will mark this with spoiler tags just in case, though it's not really sensitive material and I don't get specific:



Spoiler



I am so tired of the artificially prolonged "will they or won't they" romance. It's like, oh, oh, here it goes, he's just about going to say something... but he doesn't, again, for the hundredth time. And he won't, ever, until a dramatically appropriate moment in the last book. I _know_ this, so you don't need to keep faking me out, Patrick Rothfuss. Yeah, I know Denna's supposed to be all wounded, and if he makes a move he'll scare her off or whatever, but it still drives me crazy.



Annoying on every TV show ever made, annoying here.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

I'm almost done with it!  I had to skip through large chunks of the Adem village chapters.  I mean, sheesh, Patrick Rothfuss!  It's like he modeled his writing in the second volume on Melville's whale chapters in "Moby Dick."


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

DYB said:


> ...It's like he modeled his writing in the second volume on Melville's whale chapters in "Moby Dick."


I think I was the only one in my English class who actually liked that part of _Moby Dick_. But I agree, both of Rothfuss's books could have been seriously trimmed of repetitious stuff that served only to reinforce what I had already gotten. Fortunately the writing was good, at least.


----------



## J.G. McKenney (Apr 16, 2011)

Absolutely loved the book, told Mr. Rothfuss, and was thanked by him for the complement.


----------



## M.S. Verish (Feb 26, 2010)

Definitely on my TBR list. Met Mr. Rothfuss at GenCon '09 while my wife and I were in Authors' Avenue. He's the nicest dude. Very witty, but down to earth. What was strange was that hardly anyone knew he was there. He sat 10 feet away from us for hours, and we had free reign to approach him whenever and talk.


----------



## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

Howdy, y'all. I interviewed Pat Rothfuss for our podcast back in April. We talked about The Wise Man's Fear and lots of silly stuff.


----------



## mom133d (aka Liz) (Nov 25, 2008)

Its still $15?! I might have to hit the library for a DTB copy. Loved the first


----------



## Kathelm (Sep 27, 2010)

I've been holding off on this one.  Judging from the first book, I didn't get the sense that Rothfuss was the sort of writer who cares about moving the plot along, and second books are usually mostly filler.

To rephrase that in the form of a question: How is the pacing?


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Well, I finally finished it. It's flawed and not as good as the first book. The main problem is, as noted above, the pacing. Some of it was just boring, most notably Kvothe's 5000 years with Felurian (okay, it only felt like 5000 years) and 4999 years in Adem (again, a very slight exaggeration.) But the rest of the book I enjoyed as much as the first volume. I saw on the Amazon page Rothfuss discussing all the pruning he did to the text. I would have easily pruned another 300 pages at least. But that's neither here nor there at this point. I gave the first book 5 stars; I'd give this one...3.5. Maybe even 4 stars.

I see what people meant above when they talked about Kvothe just being pretty stupid for such a smart guy, making ridiculous mistakes and saying dumb things over and over again. But they mostly felt fairly organic to me. I wanted to slap him on occasion, yes, but it didn't ring false that he would say and do such stupid things. He is a young kid who grew up in a fairly open environment when his parents were alive and then without any adult supervision for several years. Plus he's a teenager. Of course he does stupid things. The "romance" with Denna - I also understand the complaint above. But it doesn't bother me. In some ways I hope they never consummate that relationship.

Above someone mentioned the possibility that Madam Lackless is


Spoiler



Kvothe's aunt.


 I can totally see that happening and I wouldn't have caught on to it if it wasn't pointed out here. Good catch! No doubt she'll find out soon enough.

The ending was interesting. My guess is that Bast


Spoiler



hired the soldiers as a way of reminding Kvothe that he's a warrior.


 But the situation didn't turn out that way. My guess is that at the end he


Spoiler



kills the soldiers.


 If for no other reason than to wipe out evidence of his involvement in the brawl.

Has it been mentioned how old Kvothe is now? I assume all of the events he's describing happened in the Chronicler's own lifetime, right? Or is Kvothe, like, 500 years old? I don't get a real sense of the timeline between the present in the Inn and the events he's describing from his childhood.


----------



## Ben Dobson (Mar 27, 2011)

I don't so much want him and Denna to do any consummating as to just play a new note of any kind.  They seem to just have the same interaction over and over.  She shows up with a new suitor, Kvothe is jealous but they get close again, something almost happens between them but doesn't, she disappears for a few more chapters.  It's not a big complaint, but it's a little old.

About the pacing--it's unreliable, but it kept me reading.  The Felurian bit is, as mentioned, interminable.  Like in the first book, you could divide this one into several smaller sections that each tells the story of a part of his life, and exactly how much you like the book will very much depend on how interested you are in each individual situation Kvothe goes through.  In some ways, though, these books are appealing to me in that way.  They're not really about advancing the main plot--the main plot is usually way in the background.  They're more about just recounting this guy's pretty impressive life, going from experience to experience.  Some are more interesting than others, but which ones those are might vary from reader to reader.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

I hear ya, Ben.  There was nothing in the 1st book that bored me.  But in "Wise Man's Fear" two sections were just unbearable: Felurian and Ademre.  I've mentioned Felurian before.  As far as Adem and Ademre: Rothfuss spent pages and pages and pages talking about the hand-gestures Adem use to communicate. Well, reading descriptions of hand-gestures is like watching paint dry.  After the first few paragraphs my eyes glazed over and I gave up imagining what the heck he was describing, and started skipping.  Those interminable conversations between Kvothe and Tempi (using Tempi's very bad English) was like pulling teeth.  I know it's how Kvothe felt, but did the reader have to be put through the same torture?  And then there was Ademre: I can't figure out if Rothfuss wanted us to actually like these people or not.  I think he did.  They are brave and noble, remarkable warriors, honest, etc.  But instead he managed to turn them into dimwitted idiots who don't even know where babies come from.  I started out admiring them, but by the time Rothfuss was through I wanted to smack every single one of them, and Kvothe for not burning the whole darned village down 200 pages ago.    I hope he spends the next five years "pruning" the third volume.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Firstly, I very much enjoyed the first book and enjoyed the second, though not quite as much as the first. However...

[SPOILER ALERT]

My biggest boredom-producer was the "Kvothe hates what's-his-name" (whoever the noble student is that he's always at odds with). All their antagonistic encounters with neither learning any sort of useful lesson started to grate on me. Imagine if Melville had written _Moby Dick_ such that every other chapter or so was an encounter with the whale in which Ahab lost yet another appendage. After awhile in the first book and then again in the second, I got to the point where I wanted to scream first at Kvothe for being such a thick-skulled idiot, and then at Rothfuss for apparently assuming I might not have quite caught on yet to the fact that these two guys hated each other. In fact, I might have set aside the second book if the school term had continued for Kvothe instead of the faculty finally running him out of town for awhile.

I also got a bit tired of Kvothe being in the upper 99.999th percentile in pretty much anything he set his mind to: music, magic, fighting, memorizing, etc. (and naturally every young woman he interacts with is gorgeous). Maybe we'll find out he's the [re]incarnation of a demi-god or something, but it's hard to feel sympathy for someone who seems to have so much natural talent in so many different areas. Even though most of his problems are brought on by the fact that he's still essentially a boy and has a corresponding lack of wisdom, as often as not I wanted to smack him upside the head rather than empathize with him.

Fortunately, Rothfuss's writing was enough to keep pulling me along even when I got perturbed with such plot and character elements.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

NogDog said:


> Firstly, I very much enjoyed the first book and enjoyed the second, though not quite as much as the first. However...
> 
> [SPOILER ALERT]
> 
> ...


Ambrose is the dude. I think he actually only appears in this book two or three times. Though they speak of him quite a bit. There's some kind of family juicy Jakis family gossip Caudicus (the Maer's medic) wanted to tell Kvothe about the Ambrose's family, but Kvothe had to pretend like he didn't want to know. I wonder if that will come back in book 3.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

DYB said:


> Ambrose is the dude. I think he actually only appears in this book two or three times. Though they speak of him quite a bit. There's some kind of family juicy Jakis family gossip Caudicus (the Maer's medic) wanted to tell Kvothe about the Ambrose's family, but Kvothe had to pretend like he didn't want to know. I wonder if that will come back in book 3.


I'm about 99% convinced that


Spoiler



Ambrose will become the king whom Kvothe ends up killing


.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

NogDog said:


> I'm about 99% convinced that
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...


Very interesting....


----------

