Audible
Book 1 of the Kingkiller Chronicle
Okay, I just have to start with, "Wow ....."
And not just because this was over 27 hours, and because of quarantine I just wasn't out, driving around, taking 2-1/2 hour trips to meetings, so it took me a month to get this book listened to.
This is amazing world-building, incredible detail, so much thinking went into creating the time and place and characters.
And it's frustrating, because after 27 hours ... the story is just getting started.
Our hero, Kvothe, is only 16, going on 17, in the narration, when this first volume ends.
Plus it's a story-within-a-story. Kvothe has been cornered by a scribe who realizes who he is, despite being disguised as a mild-mannered innkeeper in a backwater town, and the scribe has demanded his story. So Kvothe is telling the story, with many interruptions that reveal the world is facing troubled times, and danger and evil is finding even the backwater towns and attacking.
Coming-of-age, hero's journey, whatever you want to call it, Rothfuss does an incredible job, making his flawed hero real, making the listener care. There were times I wanted to yell at my iPod, "No, don't be so stupid. Don't go there. Don't do that. You're smarter than that." But of course Kvothe didn't listen ...
What's it about? So very much. Magic and loss, danger, adolescent stupidity, grudges, injustice, the struggle for survival, the creeping approach of ultimate, world-destroying evil, people doing the best they can, friendship ...
Wow.
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