The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
Hachette Gollancz, 2008
672 pages
RRP: AU$24.99
ISBN: 9780575081406

Reviewed by Kate Smith

It was the back of the second book in this series, The Wise Man’s Fear, that caught my attention to begin with: a blurb on the basis of which I tracked down the first part of the tale so I could get the full story (as I always prefer to do).  As a frequent reader of this genre, I was interested but not desperately as I have often been let down by a blurb before.  Not desperately interested, that is, until I started reading.

Very quickly I found myself being drawn into the story of the man calling himself Kote.  After the first fifty pages or so, however, I was dismayed to think that I was about to read an autobiographical style story, a tale that wasn’t focused on the adult character I had already come to want to know more about.  I’m glad for the bloody-minded side of my personality that will not allow me to abandon a story once begun, for while it did take me a week to get back into the novel once I did I found myself engrossed.

Kote’s story begins with him hiding in a tavern in the middle of nowhere but then becomes Kote telling his own story from childhood with the occasional interruption of reality.  Rothfuss constructs his work, and Kote’s story well, pieces falling into place as they are required and not before.  A hero with human frailties, greater than human abilities, the love of his life to find and the ultimate evil-doer to defeat could be amazingly corny, but as Rothfuss writes it is the essence of a perfect fantasy genre tale.

Towards the end of the book the central character himself says that the previous six hundred and fifty pages is but the setting of the stage for the greater part of the tale, but the story does not read as though it is simply a background.  Every word written works towards forging characters and a world that will allow for the finding of love and destruction of evil to occur without the need for background information that would interrupt the smooth nature of the continuing story.

I loved reading The Name of the Wind in a way that many stories of the genre haven’t captured me for quite some time, and I’m desperately searching for the quiet time in my backyard when I can enjoy delving into an engrossing tale, in order to read the second instalment.