Five-Star Friday: The Name of the Wind

Five-Star Friday is a periodically regular (say what?!) feature that I’m planning on running on Fridays (but not every Friday) in which I talk about (or verbally drool over) a book that I’ve read and ADORED (sometimes they’ll be recent releases and other times they might be older…my piles are tall and the bottoms are old). Yay! I always feel so happy and light and wonderful when I am beside myself with delight over a book, and I want to share the love with you all in the hopes that we can all get together and have an embarrassing, squeal-filled love-fest full of lots of high-pitched “Ohmygod, I KNOW!s” and chest-clutching sighs of contentedness. Huzzah!^*

There are not many words for how much I ADORED THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss. I will endeavor to get them all written down here. Because guys? This book is SO LEGIT, I don’t even know if it’s possible for me to do it justice by talking about it.

Guys. THIS BOOK. I die. Seriously. I’ve been staring at those non-sentences for five minutes, because I don’t even know what else to say about the story of Kvothe, charming, smart, badass, confident ginger who gives me the FEELS ALL OVER THE PLACE. I love him hard, and I love the world he inhabits, and the people he meets, and the dramas he lives through. Patrick Rothfuss is a mother-effing GENIUS OF GENIUSES. 

So before I go on a rant, which I can’t say won’t happen before this gush-fest is over, I feel the need to explain why I haven’t read this book until recently. The reason the cover up there is kind of random-looking, and is not the cover that you might find if you were to buy a copy of THE NAME OF THE WIND, the first book in The Kingkiller Chronicle, now, is because I deliberately hunted down a picture of MY book cover. Guys. This is a first-edition cover. I have a first edition of this book. It has LITERALLY been sitting on my shelf since 2007 (2007!) collecting DUST. Dust! When I finally decided to give THE NAME OF THE WIND a go at the urging of ALL THE PEOPLE, realizing that I’ve been hiding/sitting on it since then made me feel like a huge TOOL. Hiding THE NAME OF THE WIND should be against the LAW. It’s too good.

Now, despite owning a copy of this book, I also took this opportunity to cave to some audiobook pressure and bought the audiobook to listen to in the car. Asheley from Into the Hall of Books and April from Good Books & Good Wine have raved about the narrator, Nick Podehl. Friends? I can’t imagine listening to THE NAME OF THE WIND in any other voice. It’s like smokey honey. You need to listen to him speak at least once in your lives.

But even though I’m gushing about the narrator’s voice, let’s just make one thing clear: It’s the story of THE NAME OF THE WIND that makes it so outstanding. In particular, it’s Kvothe. This series is basically his coming-of-age story, and it is fraught with drama, colorful characters, and a perfectly constructed world. Kvothe is an engaging, clever, complex character. The framework of Patrick Rothfuss‘ book is Kvothe recounting his youth to a chronicler–basically a biographer. Because, see, Kvothe is kind of famous. People all over this world tell stories, which have taken on legendary tones, embellishing Kvothe’s heady days at the University and after. But Kvothe’s life isn’t all grand tales. His early childhood is wonderful, but he tween years SUCK EPICALLY, as he suffers a horribly tragedy and must figure out a way to make his way in the world.

Of all the people that Kvothe meets over the course of his young life, there are a few who make a deeper, more lasting impression on him. There’s his first teacher, Ben. His friends at the University, Sim and Will, his archnemesis, Ambrose. But there are a few people who’s influence on Kvothe’s life is truly huge: his parents, and Denna.

I don’t want to give too much away about his parents, except to say that I just loved them. And one of the reasons that I adore Kvothe so much is that, as he is recounting his life, the way he talks about them is really beautiful. Sweet. It’s not often that you read about a young man who can talk about how he could see the love between his parents and how he looks up to their relationship. It’s just really nice.

Which brings us to Denna. Denna is THE GIRL, and mostly I enjoy her quite a bit. She’s obviously clever, street-wise, beautiful, and magnetic. She has this charisma, and it attracts all kinds of men. Including Kvothe. He spends an incredible amount of time looking for Denna, thinking about Denna. Their relationship is actually pretty great. They’re good foils for each other. The one thing that did bother me wasn’t so much Denna herself, but rather the way Kvothe talks about her. She basically can do no wrong. If Kvothe has any say, Deena shit doesn’t stink. She’s perfect, amazing, the best ever. He ignores the fact that, for all that she’s easily likable, she’s also inconstant, emotionally aloof, variable, and incapable of staying in one place for long, and when she decides to leave, she just up and goes. No thought for anyone else. The fact that Kvothe–both the teenager who is interacting with Denna and the man who is remembering her–ignores these facts seems unfair to Denna, and silly of him.

So, I should probably wrap this up here by saying this: I can’t imagine what I was doing with my life before I read THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s brilliant. I listened to the audiobook every morning on the way to work and every night on the way home until I was finished, and by then I had bought the second book on Audible and started listening to THAT right away. With no stopping. But THE NAME OF THE WIND is pretty much the perfect fantasy. You’ll be doing yourself a favor if you read it, or listen to it. Or both.

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^*So, I know that this feature is called “Five-Star Friday,” intimating that I have five-star ratings on this blog. Alas, I’m still figuring out whether or not to have a rating system here, BUT I do always diligently rate all the books I read on my Goodreads page. The five-star titles of which I speak here are taken from my “Favorites” shelf there.