The Name of the Wind

When you're as obsessed with your bookcase as i am, travelling book-light can be a massive challenge. Fortunately, small hotels and hostels tend to have little libraries, and if you can read a book in the time it takes to see a city, your completely set. Having said this, theres a limit to how many times i can read The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey, so it makes my day when beneath these modern 'classics' and their copies in every language, i find a little gem.

I would say that Tolkien's Middle-Earth is the ultimate fantasy world, his extensive and methodical creation of an imagined realm surpassed the detail attempted by other authors. I found an insane amount of these attempts in hotels, they all began with a map; mountains and regions, languages and make believe character types. When i first found The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss it had a map of 'The Four Corners of Civilization' and introduced it's lead as a wizard 'Kvothe' and i figured it would probably have as much substance as the other books that had failed, a thought substantiated by a single endorsement by Tad Williams on the back cover.

As it turns out, I LOVE THIS BOOK! Once i got through the first few chapters and Kvothe began to tell the story of his childhood, i became attached to his character. I felt a great sense of sympathy for him, and became interested in his life without magic along with being gripped by his mysterious and incredible feats. Being introduced to Kote as a mature Kvothe, the reader's desire is to witness the key magical events that gave him the reputation of 'dragon slayer, the renowned swordsman, the most feared, famed and notorious wizard' and yet i don't skip ahead to these parts and enjoy far more his day to day life with friends, at school and work. Kvothe is not only a fascinating wizard but a fascinating man. 

Usually the best books are the ones you can't put down, but i'm actively staying away from reading The Name of the Wind in order to delay my satisfaction and make it last a little longer. So, fortunately it's actually the first part of a trilogy and i've purchased the second now i'm home from travelling. I've even had to illustrate my post with a picture of the follow up because i immediately loaned out the first when i got home. It comes as no surprise to me that The King Killer Chronicle trilogy is actually a Sunday Times Bestselling series- it obviously wasn't when the original was published, popped on the shelf in my hotel in Thailand, and endorsed by a single fantasy writer. Now it has write-ups by Publishers Weekly and The Times, and it certainly deserves them. It was nice to find i loved a book before finding out the rest of the world does too!