The Name of the Wind is the first in a trilogy of epic
fantasy books. It starts in an inn in the middle of nowhere. The world’s
getting more dangerous and not many strangers come to the inn any more. A
Chronicler arrives and agrees to write the memoir of the innkeeper as he
dictates it. The innkeeper grew up on the road with a travelling theatre
company that his parents run. One member of their troupe knows magic and begins
to teach the boy, who is a very quick learner. His father writes a song about
some extremely powerful wizards and a couple of days after performing it, the
whole theatre company is dead, save our hero. He ends up living on the streets
of a city for a few years before leaving to get himself an education at the
University. There he makes friends, enemies and has adventures. While doing so
he gets himself a reputation. Stories are still told about Kvothe over ten
years later. His customers in the inn have no idea who he is.
Obviously, this is a very basic summary of what happens in
the book. To say Kvothe had an eventful first fifteen years of his life would
be an understatement. Young Kvothe is on a mission to find the people who
killed his family and get his revenge. The problem is that most people don’t
believe this group of magicians exist. This really is a properly epic adventure
story. He never seems to get a break, it’s one thing after another. Sometimes
trouble finds him and sometimes he goes looking for it. However, in the present
day he is a completely different person and seems to have almost given up on
life.
Kvothe is an interesting character. I’m a bit concerned that
he is slightly too perfect as he has an incredible memory, and is witty and
lucky. But I got caught up in the story so didn’t mind too much. In a way he
sort of reminded me of Harry Potter as well, being an orphan with scary people
as the killer of their parents. The reckless attitude to danger is also
similar. I think I’m being unfair though and this is better than that. There
are just the right amount of characters and locations that you know who
everyone is while he’s in one location and that you can probably forget them
when you move on to the next location to meet the next set of people.
This isn’t really a hard core fantasy book but some of the
names are a bit tricky to work out how to pronounce. There are also
occasionally different languages spoken that are even worse to try and work out
so in some cases you just have to skip ahead to either the translation or the
reply and figure out what has been said. Being new to the fantasy genre I found
this world easy to get in to as people are essentially the same in whatever
universe they’re in. It’s just the technology they have available to them that
varies. This world is a nice one with big cities, small villages and rolling
countryside. Although, there is a darkness on the horizon.
I enjoyed this book and it didn’t take me long to read once
I got going as it was easy to read. It didn’t require any thought on my part, I
was just carried along on the journey. The story was broken up by interludes
back to the present. This helps absorb the story in smaller chunks but also
reminds you that this is being told to you by an older Kvothe. Having people
telling stories about Kvothe but not
knowing the man himself is a nice twist in the story and I look forward
to seeing how the rest of his life pans out and if it is as action-packed as
the first part!
Overall rating 5 out of 5.
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