{"id":1211,"date":"2011-03-15T19:56:59","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T23:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/15\/read-this-wise-mans-fear\/"},"modified":"2011-03-15T19:56:59","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T23:56:59","slug":"read-this-wise-mans-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/15\/read-this-wise-mans-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Read This: The Wise Man’s Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wise-mans-fear-cover.jpg\"I’m still reviewing epic fantasy for Shelf Awareness<\/i><\/a>, and this time I’m looking at Patrick Rothfuss’s 1000-page instant bestseller, The Wise Man’s Fear<\/i><\/a>. (And I do mean “instant,” as it debuted on the New York Times<\/i> 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…<\/p>\n

One point from the review that bears repeating: “Reading this novel without The Name of the Wind<\/i><\/a> under your belt is like walking into Hamlet<\/i> 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<\/i>… 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<\/i> and Return of the Jedi<\/i>. That’s how good this story is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}