How neckbeards see themselves- The Wise Man's Fear review 

Why does this sounds like a long and drawn out DnD campaign unironically written into a book

Oh there was a climax, it was just wasn’t a climax to the book LOL

I think I slipped into a coma when Kvothe spent pages and pages just lay around having sex with a fairy. It was like a fever dream.

When I was reading this, I thought it felt like a virgin writing himself as a Chad.

"The Wise Man's Fear" or "Kvothe takes a gap year"

How I summarise this series: when Kvothe is at the University, it's one of the best things I've ever read. When he isn't... it's far from it.

I laughed *so fucking hard* at "He learned to have sex from a fairy." I cannot believe that's a real idea this book went with.

Aye that's my book

omfg kvothe being 16 during wise mans fear... what does Felurian want with an acne ridden teen lol

Haven't read the second book, just the first. I felt at the end of The Name of The Wind that it's just a one-player DnD campaign that went off the trails because the character only wants to do sidequests.

Sounds like the equivalent of writing Harry Potter as a trilogy, with the entire first book being about all the ways Dudley bullies Harry, and the second book being all about Hermione's fight for house elf rights.

My title summary for the two books... Book 1: “Student Loans: Oh, and Some Magic” Book 2: “Sex in the Commonwealth”

I recall seeing a comment where someone called kvothe the neckbeard Mary Sue. I also recall someone listing all of the things rothfuss would have to resolve or address in doors of stone. Basically the book would have to be twice as long or there would have to be a book four. I finished this book but I was done when he was f*cking the fairy queen. By the time he’s in that fighter village or whatever, I was on speed read.

My guess: Ambrose ends up king. Kvothe kills him for being a tool. There was some reference about halfway through this book that mentioned Ambrose had been about seventeenth in line for the throne, and then got bumped up a couple of places when some family members died mysteriously in a shipwreck.

When the Main Character literally drops all of his character motivations and gains to go learn “Da Eastern Fighting Technique” I quit the book. Like dude u can’t even pace your Gary Stu lmao

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things is that we know - or can extrapolate - that he isn't going to defeat the Chandrian in the third book either. As in the present time Bast remarks that Kvothe shouldn't speak the Chandrian's real names out loud, as that could draw them. Meaning that as of the present the Chandrian is still very much on the loose and undefeated. So this entire series is basically just a prologue to the actual Chandrian story arch.

His editor says she doesn’t believe he’s written a single word of the third book in *years* , it became a whole big thing. I honestly don’t think a third book is coming out. Who knows, maybe all the fuss from that article got him writing again.

Im a big fan of this book. You are not wrong with any of these assessments.

The Name of the Wind is one of my favorite fantasy novels. The struggle of coming back from almost nothing through perseverance was great. This book i had a lot of problems with. I actually think the scenes of him recklessly murdering people is actually good foreshadowing at his obvious growing detachment from normal humans. But the pining after Dinah and the sex romp with the fae felt very out of place and too much time was given to that i felt. I don't think i disliked the book as much as you did, but the 2nd half of the book was hard to get through. I think one of the biggest flaws is that Kvothe js supposed to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator, and his encounter with the evil tree thing supposedly changed his fate. So of course Kvothe is going to make himself sound as noble as possible, but actually reading it was a slog. Learning sword play was fine as the culture was interesting around it, but again. We didn't need to read about how much he slept with his teacher

They way I feel about the Nambe of the Wind is: I like what happens around Kvothe, I like Kvothe's friends, I like the setting where Kvothe lives...but I can't come around to like Kvothe as a character...

I totally agree on the “self insert” of the author. Reading the Felurian arc as a woman was pretty cringeworthy. His prose is beautiful but to be honest that’s the only reason I’m reading it because I’m authoring my own work and the prose is amazing. The story - massive flop for me personally but like what you like. I’m well prepared to have people hate my stuff

My least favorite part was the Adem. Rothfuss very clearly found a top-10 weirdest cultures list on Cracked or wherever and shoved it all into his warrior monks with no real thought put into it. The most egregious example, of course, being the fact that they don't believe sex makes babies. There was exactly one real-life tribe, the Trobriand Islanders, that didn't realize sex makes babies, and they got that way from a very specific set of circumstances: They lived on islands with almost no contact with other tribes; they did not keep or breed animals; and their staple crop contained some type of chemical that acted as contraceptives, which is also why they had sex all the time with everybody. That includes children, by the way. This is so far removed from the Adem's situation that it makes no sense that they can't make the connection, unless they aren't human and they really don't get pregnant from sex. Then there's the Ademic language which, as a linguistics nerd, made me scream. Some cultures, when they have a high incidence of congenital deafness, spontaneously generate their own sign languages and then use them extensively to convey and supplement meaning. There is also the case of Italian, which over time generated its own gestural code to supplement spoken language with both emotive and communicative aspects. Theories as to why this is range from the range of cultures that invaded the Italian peninsula during the early centuries AD to the urbanization of the region during the renaissance era and a need to distinguish oneself amid a larger population. Ademic sign language, it is implied, expresses no semantic meaning but just contextualizes and emotes, which isn't really how sign languages in real life work. Then there's the Lethani. Lethani bothered me while I was reading the book but I couldn't put my finger onto why. Then someone remarked that the concept of "Lethani" is identical with "honor," and I feel kind of stupid for not figuring it out. Rothfuss introduces this esoteric, foreign concept and he neglects to mention that virtually every culture has variations on the exact same concept. Fuck Ademre, fuck Ademic, fuck the Fae, fuck Felurian, Cthaeh's cool, I'm out.

my confusion sort of stems from how the author, who I'm certain is a great guy, was talked about like he's the second coming of Tolkien when he'd only written one well received book and a rather lukewarmly received sequel (plus a short story?) and then nothing of note for almost a decade. he may come back and knock our socks off, but I'm not sure his library quite makes sense for the legend.

When read the Name of the Wind my first thought was that wow this has very beautiful writing. Second thought was the book was one big wish fulfillment power fantasy book. I've read alot of webfiction with power fantasy/wish fulfillment themes (I'm ashamed to admit that) so I can easily recognize what the Name of the Wind was even under the cover of elegant writing. However, my friends didn't really see what I meant and sang praises of the book. Now when the second book came out, they really had no choice but to admit that it's really just a power fantasy book with top tier prose.

I enjoyed The Name of The Wind, and bits of The Wise Man's Fear, but by the end it had devolved into blatant wish fulfillment.

2:22 Okay Patrick, gonna have to ask you to keep your Tinkerbell fanfic to yourself.

The only thing that's keeping me from yeeting the book entirely are the interactions between Kvothe and his friends. That campfire scene? chef's kiss.

"Kvothe js supposed to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator" Imagine how easy it is to get rid of dumb plot points with that excuse. "Oh, see, Twilight isn't really just teenage female fantasy, Bela may just be an UnReALiAbLe NaRraTor, so all the stupid teenage self-fulling stuff that happens isn't really happening and this book is actually secretly good"

I spent the whole book wondering why the author thought the reader would care so much about kvoth's exact bank account balance. Also, i skipped the entire felurian section except for the daemon whatever its called tree, and the rest of the story did not suffer for it

I think that the people that really love this book just don't care about overarching stories that much, and just enjoy seeing kvothe walking around doing stuff. The Slow Regard of Silent Things leans into that as well if Im not mistaken

My two cents: The major theme of these books is how real events get turned into stories, and the mythologizing of mundane happenings. That's why we get all these stories. Jax stealing the moon is the 'story-fied' version of the Fae creation myth. The story is not so much about Kvothes revenge, as it is about the story of Kvothe versus the person Kvothe. How he gets this mythical aura, and how it ruins him.

There's no way Rothfuss is going to finish the book without using some "cursed all-power giving relic" plot device or something similar

I really enjoyed the parts where the characters are just sitting there and telling each other stories. I had the book pitched to me as being a story about storytelling, its the story of a guy telling his life story & all of the stories that he was told that had an impact on him, so I got what I expected. That being said, I still don't think that the second book is super well executed. I like to believe that the scenes with the fey and warrior training are entirely fabricated by Kvothe. I kind of hope that if/when doors of stone comes out, we'll find out that he just lied about those parts of the story.

the books are how a villain would write their own autobiography.

You and Dominic Noble uploaded at exactly the same time today and I'm finding it harder and harder to convince my face-blind ass you're not the same person or like, related somehow with how similar your content and faces are. (Throw Caleb Johnson in there too as ur triplet)

Could have done so much with just that title. "The Wise Man's Fear." I'm assuming the wise man's fear would be looking/being foolish. This could have been a perfect time to show his arrogance causing him to make a spectacular fool of himself, after which he could learn the value of humility.

About the part where Kvothe rescues those kidnapped women, I thought it would have been pretty cool if those Edema Ruh were real, and not fake like in the book. Then there would have Kvothe facing the fact that the Ruh were not as innocent as he thought they were and there was darkness and corruption surrounding his childhood and family. Idk that seems like a more interesting concept to me.

A stream of consciousness ensues: He invents the bloodless/arrowcatch but he doesn't do anything else that could be considered revolutionary in the uni, not even naming. Given how few people there are at the university the fact that nobody came up with it before isn't really a point against kvothe being OP tbh. Kvothe fucking up and digging himself out of his hole is a recurring plot point with the uni, the Maer, and the Adem, and even at the end of the book he still isn't more competent than their average child so he is hardly a badass fighter. He only wins his final fight because his enemies are drunk or asleep, and still takes a wound iirc. The most important point of the main plot with the chandrian (which I don't really think of as the main plot since I'm more invested in the small adventures) is he learns their true names from the Adem, which is super important considering his search for info. Now he knows why his family was attacked and has a stepping stone to move forward. Does come a little out of nowhere though. The slow pacing of the Eld arc was kinda the point IMO, it was a reflection of kvothe's own feelings of boredom, it still dragged but I think it had some thematic purpose. The point about the smaller arcs being pointless to me doesn't hold much weight since as a continuation from book 1 he's being prideful, gets burned, and building himself up again, and it shows how he could have a background in intrigue or combat as setup for his legend later on. Taking them out means that his development of his capabilities comes across as deus ex machina since he just appears to have gained them instantly instead of working for them like he did. I disagree a bit on sympathy being weak because we do see him kill dudes with it in the Eld fight, but some better setup of that would have been nicer. I did take issue with how the Maer sent him off with only 4 others to hunt down the bandits in the Eld, instead of a bigger team of soldiers to ensure they win, but maybe he just wanted kvothe to be quiet for a while and if he died it wouldn't have bothered him. It still felt off considering they know there's enough bandits to overpower the tax collectors and their protection. About sex god kvothe - iirc he only sleeps with 4 women, 2 of which are from a culture that doesn't see sex as intimacy, so he's pretty lame compared to mat cauthon in wot who is just constantly horny it seems. I love the Cthaeh. That is all. The battle of wits with felurian I thought was kinda neat since he just manipulates her pride and barely survives anyway, ie using his wits to escape a situation where he is massively outmatched. Wise man's fear is still my favourite single book (not series though), but I can totally understand why someone would hate it. It seems to mostly be based around if you can stand kvothe as a protagonist, since he holds the story together. I however don't think of it as a road to a larger plot, which is probably why I'm happy with so many smaller arcs. It felt nice to not just be a generic act 2 of a hero's journey, which is a cliché I honestly hate at this point. It just felt like a series of subarcs that was more in line with how a non-chosen one fantasy hero could be if they explored their world, albeit somewhat dramatised. Maybe I'm just chatting a load of shit I am going from memory after all.

I think people really liked this one (me included) because we love the first one and are truly content-starved for this particular story, and we had to pretend there was a story to sate our appetites.

This is the most beautifully written shitshow I've ever read, I can't imagine a more frustrating series.

I thought I had read a whole trillogy without an ending. Turns out the second book was split into two in my country for whatever reason. I can't remember much of the books anyway, except that I didn't like Kvothe. Another thing I remembered: The covers of the series here in Germany look like they ripped of a nother series, but with a shadowy Kvothe standing/sitting around as if he was Aang in the Avatar Opening.

I totally agree with basically everything you said in this video. Except for one point. The story about the guy who falls in love with the moon and tries to capture her was pretty much the most interesting thing in the second book to me and one of the few parts that really stuck with me. Not that I don't think it wasn't the right place to tell the story in this book or whatever. But in retrospective, it was one of the more enjoyable parts of the book inbetween all that nothingness and fairy fucking...

Name of the wind was an amazing read but the wise mans fear felt weird. It feels like kvote just got reqly drunk and told the guy a bunch of random shit, and in the third book there will be a gotcha moment exposing kvote as a fraud random dude and patrick will feel realy smart for tricking us all.

So you don't like ostentatious, egocentric, genius heroes who waste tons of time in side-plots?

If you're young and are just discovering books like Game of Thrones, this book is REALLY good..... Problem is : the more you grow as a person the less appealing Kvothe becomes.

What Trilogy? Don’t you mean the Kingkiller duology?

Oh right! I forgot this series existed! Probably because my brain was like: Nah fam, Imma scrub this from my brain.

It sounds like they swapped out the "I'm constantly broke, and here's how little money I have." narrative from the first book for a different word count filler.

I just don’t know how everything that’s been put into the first two books can be resolved in book three if it’s still supposed to be a trilogy. It feels as if it won’t be satisfying at its conclusion

Hey, there 🖐️ just wanted to say that your reviews are really great and up to the point. Keep 'em comin' 👍

at this point rothfuss should probably just pull an inheritance cyle and make it a 4-book series.

I eat popcorn🍿and soda when you rip apart hyped fantasy books. And you're Salvador Dali right: "never fear perfection, it can't be attained".

Your videos are getting better each time you really found your style!

You put into words how I felt reading this book. I was liking it, but it lacked something... and you hit the nail on its head!

Duuuude.. the mayer/vintas king story is to show us Kvothe's family line. His mother was the young Lockless lady who ran away with a "singer" aka the Mayer sister in law: 1)Kvothe's mother tought him how to act in a court setting and he knew she wasn't an Edema Ruth 2)The song his mother punishes him for singing is about the Lockless lady (aka her sister) Not to mention that the tree straight up says that if he stays near that kingdom he will eventually find the Chandrian because of the "king" (his uncle) P.S: The story about Kvothe saving the 2 girls was used in competitions and won a few awards for Rothfuss, so I think that's why he kept it in

I really like your vids, they are so good, pls keep making them (;

I don’t even read and have no idea what this book is, why am I watching this whole thing

I was a little worried when after finishing the first book he had done like one of the things on the back cover... then i got real confused after the end of the 2nd book and he had done 2 of the like dozen things listed on the back. The back cover listed so many cool things... and he hasn't done that much in 2k pages!!

What irks me the most is that, if Kvothe is telling his story *after* his downfall, then it would be more plausible that he's done some thinking already, and figured out how arrogant he'd been. The story reads as if he still thinks very highly of himself, or, more possibly, as if he's trying to just sweep everything that's bad under the rug (which just makes him more dislikeable). I really love the prose, however, so I'm really hoping that someday we'll get a third book that manages to make sense of all this... somehow.

The Door of Stone is a lie. He is never going to write that book because it is better to lie and keep the fame and the hype than it is to actually write something you don't know what it is. Patrick Rothfuss did waste a thousand words in his second book, at least plot and storywise. He says the third is going to be shorter or not as long as the second book, but I don't know how he can build and pay off so many plot lines he should have been developing since the 1st book. It's too much for an author to handle that much with so little pages.

I'm just happy you didn't do this with an actual neckbeard

Oh damn, that's right. I kinda forgot about the Chandrian. I was just enjoying the little fun stories here and there, not my favourite, but silly fun. I really don't need the next book. I'm happy because I wasn't invested in old Kvoth and his story.

I’m pretty disappointed about this, while The Name of the Wind was never my favorite book, it was a book my mother and I bonded over considerably.

The thing I enjoyed about this book is pretty much exactly what you disliked. I like the idea of a story about a guy who became his world's legendary hero figure in myth, and he has these dozens of amazing mythical stories, any one of which would be unbelievable if told about anyone else. "He was such a good mage he got the University to PAY HIM tuition!", "He was the first outsider to ever learn the Adem language and combat style!" "He had sex with Felurian and lived to walk away!" etc. It's stupid, I won't deny that, but I kinda enjoy the process of Kvothe becoming a stupidly OP Gary Stu. It feels like if a videogame or tRPG protagonist was the star of a novel - like how in Skyrim you can be the Dragonborn and also Grand Mage, head of the Blades, head of the Companions, head of the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood, a Vampire Hunting legend, etc etc. It makes less sense and is way less logical in a contained narrative like a novel than in a videogame, which I find enjoyable for its incongruity.

Its a very well written japanese fantasy light novel.

I basically skipped the last third of the book then went back to see if I missed anything important , turns out I actually didn’t and I could have stopped reading earlier

I loved when he got kidnapped by a fairie and becomes THE BEST at fucking! Was that before or after he went to the warrior monks for a week and instantly became THE BEST at fighting?

oh my god, finally someone that agrees with me on this series. great worldbuilding, ruined by a gary-stu protagonist.

I'm happy to announce that I managed to ban every memory of this book from my mind. It was obnoxious. I ruined a holiday reading it. Glad I'm not the only one who disliked it.

I've been saying this for years. Thank you for this review.

Just reread TWMF....I DO wish there was more progression to some or all of the mysteries; 1. The existence of the Amyr 2. More Chandrian characters 3. The mystery of his parentage 4. Auri 5.The doors of stone 6. The Lackless box 7. The creation war 8. Kvothe's current state and what caused it

I understood all the fuss after reading The Name of the Wind. I felt completely meh after The Wise Man's Fear - it's well written, but it really does feel like a wish fulfillment/ self insert thing. It's at a point where I don't even think I'll read the last book, if it ever does come out. Firstly, it's been so long since I read the first two that I may have to read them again to catch up (and I don't want to deal with that), and secondly, I don't think I want to read more about Kvothe after the second book.

The title of this video is a good articulation of what I felt with this book. Although, I do think it probably does better as an audiobook though. I enjoyed parts of the book and some of the ideas that were attempted, but the internal monologues about Denna were really annoying and I've always hated how he described music. As a musician it felt like someone who wishes they were a musician would describe music and it felt cringe and weird. I also acknowledge that many musicians who've read the series gave him praise for the way he described music as per an interview he gave, but I'm a bit skeptical.

I have not read a single word of Patrick Rothfuss but hearing you describe the book and how it follows the main characters childhood to late adolescents makes me think this is a shonen manga

I agree with you. The prose is very good, there are some very interesting ideas in the book but it's a slog where nothing happens for hundreds of pages at a time and the main character becomes progressively more annoying.

It's a bit like mass effect two in a way. Mass effect one asked questions and had alot of setups. ME2 didn't advance the questions and was more a string of sidequests.

Wise Man's Fear is not a terrible book on its own, but in the context of the series it offers very little in terms of progression. We got way more questions than answers in this instalment. I fail to see how Rothfuss can wrap everything up in one book. Maybe that's why Doors of Stone is taking so long.

You glossed over why Kvofhe had to leave the Maer's service. Rothfuss thinks he's really clever, but I'm pretty sure the Maer's new wife is Kvothe's aunt. She hates the Ruh because her sister ran off with a trooper......

I often dont agree with your takes but I guess we match in this one. I was exhausted by the main characters constant whining and the cliff sized chip on his shoulder but half the time when I talk to the fans they seem to have no idea what Im on about. p.s doors of stone are never coming out.

Kvothe is a Steven Seagul character in a fantasy setting

If I was retelling my past I'd make myself the coolest and bestest too. The concept of the legendary hero telling his own stories is the main concept keeping me on the line. The last book will solidify how I regard those series. If it comes together this series will remain a personal favorite, if not then the Name of the Wind is still enjoyable.

Yep, this whole book is full of insufferable characters just spinning their wheels constantly. Whenever I consider the hype, I almost feel like everyone else read a different story. Rothfuss is great at creating lore, and his writing is compelling. He just doesn't do anything with it, sadly. Sigh...lol...

I...did not expect that spoiler section transition

I listened to it as an audiobook while being in the workshop and it worked just fine as background noise

Nooo I've loved this book back when I was like 13. Coming back to this novel years later (and still with no sign of book 3 coming out anytime soon) is like the best form of self growth

The magic system is a little too weak..? He channeled lightening into a tree, exploding it and killing off everyone in the encampment. The magic is TOO WEAK?? 🤯

Book 2 is meandering and breaks practically every rule of storytelling. Nothing happens and I doubt I could actually explain what it's about.

Hello, idk if I can suggest book reviews here but I'd be curious what you'd think about Naomi Novik's Temeraire series

The Wise Man's Fear? More like Rothfuss' Wet Teenage Fantasies

for some reason when you search the fifth sorceress on RU-vid this video pops up as the 6th video search result lol

I'd rather have bad ending than no ending at all - yeah clearly you haven't watched game of thrones

My name is Ambrose and I kept freaking out whenever you said my name because no one in my life says my name except when referring to me

You made my morning, I was waiting for somebody to scrutinize Rothfuss, I can't stand his books

I think its more about the writing style and prose that draws people into the story so well, even if there are so many problems. When I first read the book I didnt notice many of the problems until I thought back on it. Might have been because the audiobook was done well on top of the writing but when I did think back I have the same problems that you have with it.

I don't even read books, why do I watch every single one of your videos lmao

Hey James, I was wondering if you have read The Sword of Kaigen? It's a really great fantasy book that I think you would enjoy.

The Name of The Wind is one of favorite novels. Wise Man's Fear on the other hand, made me Yeet the series.

i am not someone who dnfs books. I have dnfed maybe 3 books in my entire life of reading. The Name of the Wind was one of those three and honestly I think it's incredible that you managed to not only finish it but the second one as well.

this description is fucking gold

It took me two attempts to finish reading the Wise Man's Fear. There's a moment about a third of the way through the book where it picks up and becomes really compelling, but the first time I read it I didn't get that far. It was just luck that I kept going when I tried again a few years later.