The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) in Pick-a-Shelf

Sep 20, 2009 Misty rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, excited-for, series, sci_fi-fantasy, favorites, folklore-myth-fable-fairy-tall-tale, read-in-2011

I'm going to keep this brief:

I am half in love with Kvothe. More than half, if I'm honest.
This was easily my most eagerly awaited book of the year, and it came out on my birthday. There couldn't have been a better birthday present.
It's a rare author who can write a nearly 1000-page book and still leave you wanting more.
Perfection.
'Nuff said.

And if you haven't read The Name of the Wind or Wise Man's Fear, I would suggest you do so. Now.
I never really tell people to buy books (libraries are lo ...more

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Oct 18, 2015 Nancy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, audiobook

Phew, reading this on audiobook was really a struggle! Well over 70 hours of audio meant that I had to do it in fits and starts. There was definitely a point just over two thirds of the way through where I wanted to give up, although the book finished strong which is what granted it the extra star. I think the biggest issue with audio was that it made me realise how much my reading varies in pace, skimming over parts that weren't interesting and slowing on the good bits. Because I couldn't do th ...more

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Sep 20, 2009 Becky rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, epics

Ok, it has stranger pacing than the first, but the storytelling is still totally engrossing.

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Aug 28, 2011 emily rated it liked it

Shelves: 2011-to-2015, bildungsroman, fantasy-high-fantasy, owned-physical, magic-witches-occult

3.5 stars, but I just couldn't give it 4 when it hasn't weathered well in my memory. See the addendum at the bottom for thoughts on why.

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i reread 'the name of the wind' last week in preparation for sitting down to read this book, and realized as i did so that i hadn't really retained much of it. but this time, after getting through the obligatory three silences nonsense, i found myself completely enthralled. these two books have everything i loved about 'a wizard of earthsea', but it's not jus 3.5 stars, but I just couldn't give it 4 when it hasn't weathered well in my memory. See the addendum at the bottom for thoughts on why.

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i reread 'the name of the wind' last week in preparation for sitting down to read this book, and realized as i did so that i hadn't really retained much of it. but this time, after getting through the obligatory three silences nonsense, i found myself completely enthralled. these two books have everything i loved about 'a wizard of earthsea', but it's not just a story of "yay i'm going to school to be a wizard". there's a bit of the atmosphere of 'the prestige' in there, a bit of arthurian legend, a bit of a dozen other fantasy stories i've loved that mix to make a really fun reading experience. but for all that there's a strange quality to the book that has only become clear to me after two days of thinking about it.

in a lot of fantasy series you get a sense early on of who's an important character to latch onto, and who isn't. who's going to stick around, and who's just an anecdotal character. in this series (so far, at least) almost no one besides kvothe feels like a central character (except for denna, obviously, but her mystery is a whole separate thing for me). wil, simmon, fela and the others at the university are interesting and fun, and i enjoy their presence in the books, but i don't have a sense of where or how they fit into the larger story. same with the maer and the mercenaries and the adem that kvothe meets on his travels. how important are they? should i get attached or not? are they still a part of kvothe's life, or even still alive, in the later timeline?

because the thing is, with these books there's the knowledge hanging over my head the entire time that Bad Shit is going to go down, and a lot of it. not only does kvothe still have to get booted from the university and presumably kill the king, but he is nowhere even close to hunting down the chandrian. there seems to be a great gulf between the kvothe telling this story, and the kvothe he's telling the story about. who the hell is denna and who is her patron? where does bast enter into the story and what the heck is he up to now? furthermore, i get the strong sense that when kvothe's done telling his history to chronicler there's a bit of asskicking still to be done, and where is that going to fit? and while i don't doubt that rothfuss has a lot of plot devices still up his sleeve, it's hard to believe he's going to be able to wrap this all up in one more book.

aside from all that, though, i honestly could not put this book down. and while its end left me troubled and feeling disjointed and a bit overwhelmed with all the pieces of story thrown at me, and completely at a loss as to how they might fit together, i was sad to finish it. the writing is good, and the story is intriguing and the parts flow smoothly from one part to the next.

Addendum:
On rereading, I have to say there's more that bugs me about both of these books that I think I was too caught up in the story to notice the first time through. The plot holes-- all the questions I asked in the second-to-last paragraph-- are much more jarringly noticeable, and the degree to which Kvothe is the typical man's man archetypal hero gets a bit eye-rolly after two books of it.

Maybe it's just that (perhaps an unfair comparison, but one I'm going to make anyway) on the heels of The Republic of Thieves, this sort of high fantasy that fits the tropes instead of subverting them feels rote and expected. There's something to be said for the fact that as I discovered with my reread of TNOTW, with two years' distance between now and the last time I read the book, I *still* didn't remember a whole lot about it. Some scenes stuck out, some plot threads, but the bits that are the most interesting are still the bits with current-day Kvothe, Chronicler and Bast. The rest is just a bit too David Copperfield to make it into the top of my heap.

I'll still read the third one when it comes out, of course, and I'm sure it'll make great TV when the show finally gets off the ground. But thus far the books haven't weathered the test of time as well as I'd have wished they would. ...more

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May 10, 2009 Nicole rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2011

I'm not really a fan a big books, I have to work myself up to tackle a book that's 1,000 pages and generally I'm bored with the story by the time it ends. That said, this was a great book. It felt like several books in one, and I'm somewhat surprised Rothfuss didn't break it down so he could sell more books, but he seems to not want to waste any time getting you into the story, as he did absolutely nothing to help trigger your memory of what had happened in the previous book, and picked up minut ...more

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Dec 14, 2012 Lindsay rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, z2012

Really enjoyable follow up to the name of the wind as Kvothe has more incredible adventures and battles through ongoing bad luck and misfortune. I'm really looking forward to the next book in this series as it's so full of twists and turns it's difficult to predict what will happen next. ...more

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Dec 21, 2013 Rebekah rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-adventure, genre-science-fiction-fantasy, genre-fantasy-epic-fantasy, series, genre-fantasy-magic, genre-fantasy-high-fantasy, nbrc-bom-br

This book is awful. Rambling, pointless, terrible pacing, chapters full of immature misogynistic sex fantasies. I almost didn't finish it, and finally did, mainly out of spite. Also nothing happens to add to the story from book #1, which I actually liked. ...more

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