The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The Name of the Wind - The Kingkiller Chronicle (Book 1).

Where do I begin in describing this book? Once again, I'll cop out and give you the blurb as written on the Waterstones website. It's not because I'm lazy, I just don't want to give too much away, and I feel that if I tried to write my own blurb, I would do exactly that!

'I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. My name is Kvothe. You may have heard of me.' So begins the tale of Kvothe - currently known as Kote, the unassuming innkeepter - from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, through his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe the notorious magician, the accomplished thief, the masterful musician, the dragon-slayer, the legend-hunter, the lover, the thief and the infamous assassin.

 I stumbled upon this book whilst searching for new titles on the Waterstones website, and I left it for a few months before needing a short series to read whilst waiting for the publication of a new book. It has positive reviews on the website, so I thought I would give it a go.

Now, I would describe this book as a story within a story. In the first few chapters, you get introduced to Kote the innkeeper and Bast, who is Kote's student, as well as some of the town's people. After the arrival of a demon and a scribe, Kote tells his life story over a period of three days of when he was once known as Kvothe (pronounced similar to "quothe") who was something of a hero. Ok, that is all I am going to tell you because I don't want to spoil anything - I will add though that not everything described in the blurb comes up in this book, you'll have to read book two, then wait for book three to be published first.

This is Rothfuss' debut novel and it is amazing! Kvothe is such an interesting character. He is an extremely talented boy who can pretty much do anything when he puts his mind to it, and although this could make him very annoying, I think this has been averted since he does make some very stupid mistakes throughout the book, and this reflects Kvothe's age as this is a tale of him growing up. Moreover, Kvothe's life is far from perfect, and it was interesting to see this talented lad struggle and think his way out of his troubling situations throughout this period of his life. I love the universe this book is set in and I can vividly imagine it. I want to go to the grotty streets of Tarbean, I want to travel the roads with the Edema Ruh, and above all I want to go to The University and visit the Archives - oh and learn about magic, of course. The supporting characters are interesting, but I felt that some of them were not as developed as they could have been, however there are some gems such as Elodin, but you will have to read the book to find out more about him.

This book is a quite lengthy one at 600 odd pages, but it reads like a book half its size, and you do very much lose yourself in Kvothe's world. I would stay up late reading this book because I just did not want to put it down!

The last book I reviewed I gave a mark out of 5, but now I'm going to give marks out of 10.

I'm going to give "The Name of the Wind" 9.5/10 - so go buy it and read it - immediately!