Ich muss sagen, ich bin etwas enttäuscht. Nicht, weil das ein schlechtes Buch gewesen wäre oder Rothfuss nicht schreiben könnte, aber ich hatte einfach zu hohe Erwartungen. Nach der Kurzgeschichte über Bast und den Meinungen, die ich sonst hier so auf Goodreads mitbekommen habe, ging ich davon aus, ein zweites Erlebnis wie bei Sanderson zu haben. Dem war nicht so. Was nichts daran ändert, dass Rothfuss wunderbare High Fantasy schreibt, die sich im Gegensatz zu so vielen momentanen Werken nur auf einen einzigen Hauptcharakter konzentriert und nicht eine gefühlte Million Sichtweisen einführt, von denen man erst nach 5 Bänden versteht, welche wichtig sind. Nein, dies ist das Abenteuer von Kvothe, und wie er es als Innkeeper erzählt und man gleichzeitig seine Kindheit und Jugend begleitet, ist gut gemacht. Hier und da spannend und auf jeden Fall mit der Andeutung, dass hier noch sehr, sehr viel mehr kommen wird. Es erinnert mich an Richard Schwartz oder Terry Goodkind - wobei ich mich hier doch hier und da schwer getan habe, weiterzulesen und dran zu bleiben. Kvothe kann nämlich bei Zeiten ein einfach unsympathischer Hauptcharakter sein, bei dem einem herzlich egal ist, ob er jetzt noch mal ausgepeitscht wird, sein Widersacher ihn erwischt oder was ihm sonst noch so zustößen könnte. Allerdings habe ich 13 Bände Terry Goodkind ausgehalten, da werde ich hier auch weiterlesen :D

I really enjoyed reading this first book: I like the storytelling-aspect of the narrative with the interesting early life of Kvothe and the breakups with visitors in the inn. What I didn't enjoy at all was the stuff with the draco, it felt like an overdramatic climax and I would have preferred more stories about the university life or sympathy at all. Can't await to read the second book!

Although I know that many people really love this book and its sequel, I think it’s merely ok. There are great and imaginative ideas around, but I had to fight through most of the book, as it was rather „exhausting“ to read and took me forever. I really liked the beginning and parts of the end, but found the most part of Kvothe starting (and continuing) his studies rather boring. It seemed like the only thing that mattered was money, or rather the lack thereof. After the 10th repetition of „I need to get my hands on an insane amount of money asap“, a new idea to give the protagonist something to „overcome an obstacle“ would have been nice. Also, most of the time when he seems to have bettered his situation, something happens and it makes his situation worse than before. Again and again and again. That was simply anxiety inducing! I hate the looming feeling that something bad will happen AGAIN and during a lot of the University parts this was a constant feeling. Also, the last few chapters in the inn were somewhat strange and didn’t fit into the flow at all. Sadly, I won’t be continuing this story…

Patrick Rothfuss' acclaimed novel The Name of the Wind has perhaps one of the highest average ratings of all the books on Goodreads (4.55), with almost 250,000 5-star ratings. Nothing could go wrong with such a novel ... or can it? I'm very difficult to convince with fantasy novels; few authors within this genre (namely [a:J.K. Rowling|1077326|J.K. Rowling|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1415945171p2/1077326.jpg], [a:George R.R. Martin|346732|George R.R. Martin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1351944410p2/346732.jpg] and [a:Mari Ronberg|3482534|Mari Ronberg|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]) have so far managed to hook me right from the first chapter without losing their quality throughout the course of their novel(s). In this book, Patrick Rothfuss focuses on the fate of his protagonist Kvothe in a clever, thoughtfully structured coming-of-age story about his difficult youth, his teens and early adolescence, after which the second part of the trilogy will pick up to recount later parts of his life. As it turned out, the first installment in the Kingkiller trilogy was way more difficult to get through than I originally thought after reading about positive comparisons between TNotW and the Harry Potter books. Which leads me directly to main parts of my criticism: the similarities to Harry Potter. I tried hard, really hard not to constantly compare those two books with each other, but too much reminded me of Hogwarts in this book, and those similarities were not always in favor of TNotW. First of all, the world-building in this novel is intriguing, though not extraordinary. The author didn't include any reasons for caring about the world, so that ultimately I wouldn't have been in tears if an earthquake had shattered this world completely. Secondly, the character development of the protagonist, who is also the first-person narrator of the tale which is incorporated in the framework plot, is what main parts of this book are about, yet so many other characters included in this book lack originality and varying aspects which could help to find reasons to care about them at all. If I am honest, I was disappointed by the cast of characters. We have Kvothe - the most well-developed character of the book - and Denna, a mysterious and unique female protagonist who is superbly introduced and implemented into the story ... and apart from them, I can't even recall most of the other characters' names. And this is exactly the point when I can't help but compare this book to Rowling's Harry Potter world. The similarities are rather obvious (and I won't even mention how Kvothe might be called a second Harry): What is called Hogwarts in HP, can be found as the University here. Everybody knows Draco Malfoy - but few know he has a twin brother with different looks, but very similar manners called Ambrose in this book. Of course, we have other characters: Simmon and Wilem, who were introduced as Kvothe's friends and might have had the potential to turn into interesting characters and good friends for Kvothe. The latter they did, yet they remained stereotypical and like blank pieces of paper. Patrick Rothfuss also introduces a bunch of female characters, all of them unmemorable and boring (with the exception of Auri who might have more potential in the upcoming novels). And last but not least, there are the teachers of the University. In Hogwarts, we have Snape, Lupin, Hagrid, McGonagall, Trelawney, Filch ... all of them memorable figures every HP reader should have no trouble with connecting to their specific characteristics. And in The Name of the Wind ... it was simply impossible to feel interested in any of the teachers. Maybe someone else felt different about this aspect, but I wasn't able to pretend interest in even one of them. However, if you feel in the mood for it, you might just as well find hundreds of similarities between J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I don't accuse Patrick Rothfuss of copying certain plotlines, because all those aspects are rather common in fantasy novels and I don't think for even one minute that Rothfuss looked at the Harry Potter novels and thought, "this looks nice, I might use it for my own book". No, my reason for listing these lies mainly in my personal feeling that The Name of the Wind was not very original and did not live up to its hype. Feel free to disagree with me. Patrick Rothfuss has a lot of adventure, romance and violence to offer in his book. We get to care about Kvothe early one because what happens to him helps us relate to his character, but there was nothing specifically outstanding about the character himself. What convinced me of awarding at least three stars was the well-developed plot, the atmosphere of the University itself and the romance part which felt natural to the story and as a requirement for the characters to develop into what they later became. (Initially after reading the novel, I was still ready to give it 3.5 stars, but more than a month after finishing it, the impression it left on me is so vanishingly low that I can't award more than three stars for the positive aspects I outlined in my review.) I do realize that my review is not written very objectively, but since I wasn't able to find literary significance in this work, I ultimately decided to center my review around my subjective thoughts. Most of you will think differently about the book - after all, just look at the average rating -, so just keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and all of you can feel free to love the book as much as most of you do. (Buddy Read with Dustin!)

This book doesn't deserve 5 stars, it deserves much more. Everything is explained with so much exactitude so it leaves you in the perfect in between of curiosity and knowing what will happen. The way it refeers to love and emotions in general it's just perfect. I also love that it doesn't make love the main issue, one of my top 5 books.

Dear Mr Rothfuss, can you please make them publish your Bast-story separately? And also can you please get part three published soon? I fear I can't read on until I know the end is available in print, and other than with certain other popular Fantasy series, the end of yours matters to me. [prtf]

I actually feel like this book deserves more than 4 stars and I already plan on rereading it because I have a feeling I might enjoy it more if I read it again. I read the biggest part of this book while on holiday and I never really had time to sit down and read for longer than maybe half an hour so I think it's probably mostly my fault that it took me really long to really get into the story. Still, it felt just really long while reading... Other than that I liked it a lot. I think the best thing about this book is its main character. Kvothe is a really interesting character and we get to know him really well. In a sense he is kind of the typical hero, he was orphaned pretty young and had a hard time growing up, but he is also extremely talented in pretty much everything he does. The interesting thing about him is, that he seems kind of pretty self-aware (don't really know if that's the right word), he knows he's different, he knows he's clever and his mind and talent are pretty much the only things he can rely on. Still his pride and temperament make sure that he pretty much constantly gets into trouble. The way the story is told is extremely interesting too. Kvothe tells his own story to a Chronicler and we also get these chapters were he is a lot older and a lot different from the way he is in his story. Not only that, but we also get to hear some of the legends that are told about him and it's quite interesting to hear what really happened (or at least what Kvothe says really happend) and how the story is told later... And last but not least the world was also extremely interesting. The world is so vast and we get to know some quite different places in it but I think I liked the university the most. It's quite mysterious and there are a lot of secrets. The magic is really fascinating and I loved to learn more about it but there are also some fascinating place and people... Honestly I could write a lot more about things I liked about this book, about the music, the love story, the other characters, the writing style, pretty much everything... But I don't really have time, so if, like me, you have problems getting into the story just know that it's absolutely worth it to push through.

The Name of the Wind was an interesting read for me and even if some parts of the story felt a bit slow, I wouldn't say any of it was unessesary. Kvothe is a teller and he tells us the story of his life (which is why I'm ok with less showing, cause it's a tale meant to be told...). It was easy for me to get caught by the myths, the magic and the music and I loved the atmosphere and the pictures that were drawn in my mind. There were also many details I liked about the world building and especially the complexity of Sympathy. We didn't saw much of the things mentioned in the blurb but with that and the ending of the first book I'm really excited for the second one. I also hope, that Kvothe will grow a little as a character and become less hasty there. 4,5 Stars