The Name of the Wind

Read “The Name of the Wind” for its prose and its people rather than its plot. Kvothe is followed through each stage of his growing up, and the reader knows from the outset that this is how a legend comes to be and later hardens into myth; the supporting cast is drawn with the same care. At 752 pages it is long and unhurried, and the trilogy it opens is still unfinished.

Worth knowing Patrick Rothfuss worked on the story for well over a decade before DAW published this first part in 2007. It is a frame story: the innkeeper Kote tells his life as Kvothe over three days, one day per book. The second day, The Wise Man’s Fear, came out in 2011; the third, The Doors of Stone, still has no publication date, so it is worth starting in the knowledge that the trilogy is unfinished.

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