Tom Lieber's Microblog

Feb 16, 2023

Finished reading: The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 2) by Patrick Rothfuss 📚

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve re-read this series. It’s some small number like three or four, but the trilogy is incomplete, so the story arc is a relentless uphill climb no matter where you pick it up. So I don’t remember it as a character bouncing from plot point A to B to C. It’s like a thick rope braided from hundreds of interesting storylines.

Something I really came to appreciate this time around was the slow degradation of relations between Kvothe and Denna. I wish I could put my finger on what makes their conversations so viscerally discordant—but I can’t, and I think that’s part of what makes them so uncomfortable. They feel like difficult conversations between real people with real pasts and real internal monologues. They have real, complicated issues to work out. Maybe I’ll figure more of it out next time. :)