Review | The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle #2) by Patrick Rothfuss

Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Published: March 2011
Publisher: DAW
Pages: 1088
Format: ebook
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Supernatural
Rating: ★★★★★

[Show Synopsis]
Synopsis
In "The Wise Man's Fear," Kvothe searches for answers, attempting to uncover the truth about the mysterious Amyr, the Chandrian, and the death of his parents. Along the way, Kvothe is put on trial by the legendary Adem mercenaries, forced to reclaim the honor of his family, and travels into the Fae realm. There he meets Felurian, the faerie woman no man can resist, and who no man has ever survived...until Kvothe. Now, Kvothe takes his first steps on the path of the hero and learns how difficult life can be when a man becomes a legend in his own time.

Review
This book seemed to be on par with the level of adventure and excitement that was in the first book. If it wasn't for the fact that life got too busy for me to continually read, I would have read this just as fast as the first one instead of it taking the week that it did. The story line is finally starting to progress more and become more interesting. Kvothe finally starts to see more of the world rather than just the academy. At the same time, there are some things that are just becoming more and more annoying.

I was so excited when Kvothe started going on adventures. The school was great, but if felt like Rothfuss was starting to run out of trouble for him to get into. Plus it just seemed to be dragging on and turning into a darker version of Harry Potter. It definitely needed some mixing up, which made it a relief when that finally happened.

As I mentioned in my review of the first book, Kvothe seems to have a silver tongue that is going to get him into deep trouble. We finally start to see the start of that trouble. For as nice and sweet as he can be, he seems to have a knack for pissing people off. Even the people that end up liking him end up pushing him away in the end.

His money troubles were just getting kind of annoying. He wasn't too smart with where he put his money which accounted for half his problem. He would do great one minute, and then blow it all on one stupid decision.

One of the most annoying things that stuck out to me was that the taste or look or feel of everything Kvothe tried to describe was pretty much completely indescribable and required first hand experience. It's kind of hard to write a book where description is key and have everything extraordinary be indescribable. Isn't there something amazing that can be described!?

In spite of these few points that I found frustrating and/or annoying, this book was very well written and had me captured until the last page. It's so frustrating that there isn't an estimated year of publication yet. Good books take time, but I hope he doesn't take too much longer!