Read This: The Wise Man’s Fear

I’m still reviewing epic fantasy for Shelf Awareness, and this time I’m looking at Patrick Rothfuss’s 1000-page instant bestseller, The Wise Man’s Fear. (And I do mean “instant,” as it debuted on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list in the #1 position.) This was a fun review to write in many ways—for one thing, it’s the first chance I’ve ever had to use the phrase “Victorian triple-decker” professionally—although it can be difficult to convey the best aspects of such a hefty novel without having thousands of words of your own in which to elaborate. Still, I hope I did it justice…

One point from the review that bears repeating: “Reading this novel without The Name of the Wind under your belt is like walking into Hamlet in the middle of the third act; you could probably pick the story up contextually, but you’re still missing out on a lot.” If you have plenty of spare time on your hands, though, delving into 1,600-plus-pages of high epic fantasy in which a man sits at an inn at the far end of the world and reflects on his youthful career as a master troubadour, kickass warrior, and budding magician—while, in the world outside the inn, dreadful forces connected to some as-yet-unexplained aspect of his past get closer and closer—would be a hell of a way to spend it. I haven’t felt this excited about a series, and this eager to find out where the heck the author is taking it, since George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire… and for those of you whose eyes are glazing over at that reference, imagine the anticipation we felt in the early 1980s between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. That’s how good this story is.

15 March 2011 | read this |