Here, Matt and Callan discuss Patrick Rothfuss' "The Wise Man's Fear". We hope you enjoy! Background Artwork by: Renaud Perochon www.artstation.com/artwork/8m1dQ Endcard Music by: Danilo Alimo • The name of the Wind -...
I definitively enjoyed this book far more than the first one, partly due to switching to the UK audiobook. All the university characters greatly benefited from the fleshing out they got. At times it almost felt like he redid the one-page chapter from the first book of Kvothe, Will and Sim being drunk and happy, to have more impact now that we actually care about his two buddies. Never got the impression that the Maer thought there was a real chance of Kvothe dying. It's implied he thought the bandits might be peasents and previously they ambushed one tax-collector with two mercenaries whose position they knew. One Adem mercenary and one tracker should reasonably be enough to solve that problem, nothing really implied that there would be 17 soldier and Cinder. The whole culture and manmother thing is based off a real culture in southeast asia, off the Trobriand Islands that had and partially still have that belief. I think that many Adem individuals realised the truth of conception, but did not really speak out or at least did not manage to change the culture and those things did not get passed down. The scandinavian accents make some sense to me, even if I would not have chosen them. It probably was Rothfuß decision and not Nick Podehls, given how they worked together. The Adem are described as looking stereotypically scandinavian (blonde, fair skin, blue eyes) and vikings also have a history of wandering away from their sparse, infertile lands as soldiers and mercenaries, for example the personal guard of the Byzantine Emperor consisted of viking mercenaries. Vikings also had fairly proactive women compared to the rest of europe. (although female viking warriors were not really a thing) Basically the Adem are part viking, part trobirand islanders, part jedi. My guess is that either the lockless box or the door in the archive won't hold a important secret, but by learning how to open one Kvothe might learn how to open the other too and one of the two will be important.
Book 3 will be the end of Kvothe's story, I think and it'll probably end with silence of three parts and the man waiting to die. The only way we'll get anything from the present time story is if Rothfuss chooses to write other books. And I don't mind that.
I have a tin foil theory that the story of Kvothe is a manling story Bast heard, cultivated by Kvothe’s own tall tales, and Bast is now trying to force it to be real and to be part of it.
