The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

For our inaugural episode of the Bro-dacious Book Club, we take on a modern fantasy classic: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Will the 700+ page count do us in, or will we prevail against dragons, demons, and questionable representation of women? Tune in to hear us discuss a student like none other, and try to figure out what the heck a character arc is.

CW for brief, non-graphic discussions of (attempted) sexual assault and drug use. 

Intro:
Pump Sting by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4251-pump-sting
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro:
Iron Bacon by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3925-iron-bacon
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

Erin:   0:07
Hello and welcome to the Brodacious Book Club, the podcast where we host a book club -

Matt:   0:12
- and I haven't read the book. This podcast is for people who don't have time to read, but still want to know what's up in the world of fiction.

Erin:   0:18
I'm your host, Erin Rockfort, and with me is my good good bro Matt Thomas. Basically, we wanted to make this podcast because there's lots of people out there who want to be aware of what's happening in the book world but don't necessarily have the time to read or the energy to read. And you know how you go to download audio book and it's like 20 hours long and honestly, who has time for that? The idea is that you can understand the books that we describe based on the podcast

Matt:   0:43
Based on our fulsome analysis with a couple of humorous takes here and there.

Erin:   0:47
So basically what's gonna happen is I'm going to summarize the book, and we're gonna chat about it as it's happening and have a little bit of a discussion about it as well for those book nerds.

Matt:   0:57
That's exactly right. I'm gonna ask questions, and if I know what's up by the end of this, then you've done your job, Erin.

Erin:   1:03
Thanks, Matt. Just as a bit of a disclaimer, the podcast is meant for entertainment, and we're not trying to disrespect the authors or the books involved. And we encourage people to read the books themselves, support authors. We're not professional critics, we're just two a-holes who think were funny.

Matt:
That's exactly right.

Erin:
Also, maybe obviouslym, spoilers for anything in the books that we're talking about. If you have intentions of reading this book, maybe don't listen to this episode, which is not a rousing endorsement of listening.

Matt:   1:31
That's right. But but here's the thing, we're gonna try to walk the line. We're gonna try to give you an overview, fill you in, but not -

Erin:   1:40
You can still get some enjoyment out of reading the book, I think. And I do encourage that.

Matt:   1:45
With that, I guess I'll take it away. So, Erin, me as the uninformed one who has not read the book, I don't even know what book we're reviewing today. So why don't you want to start off there? What are we reading today, Erin?

Erin:   1:56
So today we're reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Matt:   2:00
Okay, okay, go ahead. Tell me a little bit more.

Erin:   2:02
It's a fantasy novel. This podcast will probably focus a little bit on speculative fiction, just because that's what I like to read. The Name of the Wind is breaking a couple of the things I want to focus on, which is, I do want to look at things that are a little bit more recent, and the Name of the Wind was published over a decade ago. I think it came out in 2009. But I think it's one those books that people either have read or have decided they're never going to get to read. So it felt like a safe choice for this first one.

Matt:   2:29
Right, right. Okay, so I understand it's rather long, do you have an approximate page count?

Erin:   2:35
So yes, on my e-reader, it was over 700 pages. I think it was 720.

Matt:   2:41
I see. So maybe not something so accessible to your average reader, but something that we can try to make accessible through our work here. Outstanding. Okay, so I understand it's fantasy. What kind of fantasy are we talking here? Paint me a word picture. What's our setting?

Erin:   2:57
It's second world fantasy. So it's your Lord of the Rings, your Game of Thrones. There's magic, there's alternative religion systems, there's swords, sorcery, all that good stuff. This is actually the first in a trilogy, which is somewhat famously unfinished. Again, the comparison to Game of Thrones is not one I make lightly. The Name of the Wind is the first book, the second book is called The Wise Man's Fear. It came out, I believe, in 2011. There has been no third book. I saw a rumour recently that it may come out this year. I guess we'll see.

Matt:   3:29
So, from over a decade ago, to the time when the second book came out. That's a large gap.

Erin:   3:35
It is. It is. Like I said, it is not dissimilar to -

Matt:   3:39
Yeah, no kidding.

Erin:   3:40
The wait on - what's Martin's next book...?

Matt:   3:42
Winds of Winter?

Erin:   3:44
Because I think that A Dance with Dragons also came out in 2011.

Matt:   3:48
Right. Okay, now our characters, who's the wise old man, who's the wayward adventurer? What are we looking at?

Erin:   3:54
This book takes place over two time periods, and we're following the same character more or less through both. His name is called Kvothe, which I hope I'm pronouncing correctly.

Matt:   4:04
I mean, it's a fantasy name, right?

Erin:   4:06
He's our main character, he is kind of the narrator - again, we'll get into this more. It's kind of a coming of age story within the fantasy genre, and we're gonna see those kinds of themes popping up.

Matt:   4:17
Outstanding, all right. And I guess this is the perfect segue into the actual story. My next question was gonna be, what's our arc? What's the challenge? What's the story all about?

Erin:   4:25
You'll have to find out! That might actually be a topic of discussion after we have covered the book. I guess with that we will - well, I will, start to try and summarize this monster.

Matt:   4:36
Tell me all about it.

Erin:   4:38
The book opens on the Waystone Inn, which is an inn in a small town in fantasy-ville. And there is a mysterious innkeeper, and the inn is very quiet, and we're informed that part of the quiet is from this innkeeper, who has the quiet of a man waiting to die. That's that's our intro.

Matt:   4:57
What a set up, what a set up.

Erin:   4:58
Spoiler alert, the man is Kvothe.

Matt:   5:00
I see, I see. So main characters is an old man? I don't mean to interrupt.

Erin:   5:07
That's okay. We actually, we're gonna get back to that.

Matt:   5:10
That seems like a pretty black and white question, but okay, we can circle back.

Erin:   5:14
He has bright red hair, is the other thing we learned about him in the prologue. So we zoom in also to some patrons who are having a very plot relevant discussion, they were discussing a legend of "Taborlin the Great" who knew how to call on the name of the wind. So we have a title drop right in the beginning.

Matt:   5:34
Okay.

Erin:   5:36
Which is a way of magic, like the naming of things. Which I don't think is an uncommon theme in a lot of fantasy stuff. They also mentioned something called the Chandrian, or the Shandrian? Again, we're just gonna have me stumbling over these fantasy names the whole time. I'm very sorry to Mr Rothfuss. The Chandrian are basically demons. We're gonna learn more about them later, but we get a little name drop right there at the beginning. So then another villager comes in. He's all bloody, and people are like, "Man, you you got to be more careful, what are you doing", at which point he's like, "I was attacked!" He pulls out this enormous spider, which is dead, and he says that this is what attacked him. They start throwing around names like Scraeling, which is also, from what I gather, a type of demon.

Matt:   6:20
Okay, and the spider. Is that the name of?

Erin:   6:23
It is a Scraeling. It's not just like a normal spider. It's...

Matt:   6:26
A special spider.

Erin:   6:27
It's a special spider. I'm not sure if they describe exactly how big it is. It's small enough that he was able to carry it, but also would be concerning.

Matt:   6:38
We're talking wolf spider, we're talking Australian spiders?

Erin:   6:40
At least Australian spider size. The the innkeeper, who is going by the name Kote, but he's Kvothe, he has an apprentice whose name is Bast. Bast calls him master, and it's not kinky.

Matt:   6:54
Well, it's a little kinky, inherently.

Erin:   6:59
It's a bit kinky. They have a little bit of a talk, once the common folk are gone, about the Skraeling and they talk about how they're like, okay, there's one here, are there more of them? And how three or four of them would destroy the town, which is a little bit wild because we have just learned that one was killed by this guy basically kicking it to deat.

Matt:   7:20
Right, this is wayward adventure happened on a large spider

Erin:   7:23
That doesn't build it up as a huge, suspenseful enemy, but it's fine. There's also some general world building, you know, fantasy stuff.

Matt:   7:31
As you do.

Erin:   7:32
Things kind of suck, roads are dangerous, you know, how it goes for any fantasy worlds. We then switch to somebody called the Chronicler. The Chronicler has a name, I didn't write it down. He's referred to as the Chronicler throughout, but he does have, like, an actual legal name.

Matt:   7:47
Okay, now what's his role? Is he a kind of magician?

Erin:   7:50
No, he's just a storyteller. Or a story recorder, perhaps.

Matt:   7:52
Like a historian. Hence the name.

Erin:   7:58
Exactly. And he's traveling. He gets robbed by some ex-soldiers, and he's also maybe being stalked by something in the woods. We're still in, like, the opening crawl of this novel.

Matt:   8:07
700 pages.

Erin:   8:08
It's 700 pages. We don't get to the main story until we're a good 75-100 pages into this novel. Anyway. So there's some general stuff about how, you know, Kote used to be someone before he was an innkeeper, and it's all very like, ooh, who was he? He's Kvothe.

Matt:   8:25
Again, thank you.

Erin:   8:26
You're welcome. There's some more talk about the Chandrian. Bast helps him knock this guy out who recognizes him as Kvothe the Bloodless.

Matt:   8:37
Interesting. Yeah, that's going to be something to explore.

Erin:   8:40
That comes back later. One of the things that does actually come back later. But we'll get to that. We snap back to Chronicler who is in the dark. He sees a fire, he goes to it and Kote is there. He's out hunting demons.

Matt:   8:54
As you do.

Erin:   8:54
Chronicler gets knocked out. But Kote does kill the rest of the Scraelings. He brings the Chronicler back to the inn to recover. There's also this kind of hilarious exchange where he and Bast argue like an old married couple, because he, I guess, snuck out in the middle of the night, and Bast is not happy with him for doing that.  And he also left a note that said, "If you're reading this, I'm probably dead." Which is pretty funny, given that he is - he's fine, the demons did not really pose that much of a challenge for right. Chronicler wakes up. He's like, "Hey, I know who you are, you're Kvothe. And I actually came here partially because I heard you were in the neighbourhood and I want to get your story."

Matt:   9:34
Then the story is the story of -

Erin:   9:38
Yes, the actual story is what we are eventually going to get into - we're 61 pages in at this moment, just according to my e reader.

Matt:   9:45
You know, every good story needs a good prologue. 60 pages of it.

Erin:   9:51
Kvothe is originally like, "No, I don't wanna give you my story, I'm not into it," but eventually gives into it. And he says, you know, "I will tell you, but I'm gonna need three days," which, coincidentally, are going to divide into the three novels that maybe someday this series will entail. There's some stuff about how, you know, he's a legend, and they call him the Kingkiller, which is the name of the trilogy, forgot to mention that up at the top. There is also a line that Chronicler thinks to himself of, "This is the face of a man who has killed an angel," which is a wild thing to think about someone off the cuff. It's also a reference to something that doesn't happen in this novel.

Matt:   10:32
I see what you mean by making reference to things that are not explained.

Erin:   10:35
And confession that I have not read The Wise Man's Fear. So we will not be referring to that at all, I'm just going to talk about the things that happened in this novel. At this point, I want to pause for a second and ask you how old you think Kvothe is, based on what has happened?

Matt:   10:49
Well, you know, that's what I was wondering if he's lived this great and fantastical life. And yet it's also a coming of age story, but I guess he's kind of harking back. I don't know. Maybe old man, he seems like kind of the wise old man.

Erin:   11:04
You'd think so, or at least think that he's at least middle aged. Yeah, no, he's like 25.

Matt:   11:12
Right. Okay.

Erin:   11:14
Which I just want you to keep that in mind. Both that all of the things they're talking about happen within a relatively short period of time and also that this dude is like 25.

Matt:   11:25
Okay, that'll help contextualize some of the stuff. I'm sure because a 25 year old retelling his adventures is a lot different than a 50 year old telling his adventure.

Erin:   11:35
Sure is! Kvothe says, kind of jokingly, "let's assume I in the centre of creation and the only tale of real importance."

Matt:   11:43
You know, again, it's funny you should say that because when you mentioned he was a 25 year old who wanted to talk about his life story and all his grand adventures, I thought to myself, that's a little arrogant. That's a little arrogant. So I'm curious to see where this goes.

Erin:   11:56
Yeah, that's - I think that's a good place to be at. So it switches into first person. There's this kind of odd bit of narration where he talks about all the different names he's been given over the course of his life, and he describes all of the - or like mentions vaguely all these very exciting things that he's done. Almost none of them come up in this novel. He puts next to each other that he has talked to Gods and also loved women.

Matt:   12:21
As you do.

Erin:   12:22
Yeah, which I think is a very funny juxtaposition. Again, talked to Gods, not in this book. Loved women - if he means that in, like, an emotional way, then yes, that does happen. If he means that in a physical way, it does not.

Matt:   12:34
I see. Okay, so again, a 25 year old talking up his his achievements. Surprise, surprise.

Erin:   12:39
Yeah. And then he ends this this speech with the line, "You may have heard of me," which, yeah, Kvothe. He came here to speak to you!

Matt:   12:48
Right.

Erin:   12:51
I kind of suspect that this piece might have originally been either the beginning of the novel, before the rest of this was written, or like, a fun tagline to put on like, the book jacket. Because it kind of reads like that. So then we finally get into the actual story, and not just hanging out in the framing device. We learned that he was born into a troupe of travelling performers, which is kind of fun. So this was a reread of the book, I noticed this time around that we're 71 pages in. At this point, we get the mention of his mother, who was the first female character to have appeared in this. Which is not great. She also doesn't get a name, and she doesn't speak until about 30 pages later.

Matt:   13:36
Now, is that a trend that continues in this book?

Erin:   13:39
It's definitely a bit of a trend. This novel has a bit of, uh, of an issue with women. I don't want to cast any aspersions on Patrick Rothfuss, I think he's a cool dude. But yeah, this novel has got some parts...

Matt:   13:51
Falls into the classic trap that I think a lot of perhaps older male authors fall into of only writing from the male perspective.

Erin:   14:00
Yeah, I think that's true. And also again, keep in mind that this book came out in 2009, which is not an excuse, but is kind of an explanation.

Matt:   14:09
That's right.

Erin:   14:10
So anyway, Kvothe, as a child, he meets a guy named Abenthy, or Ben, who is a traveling magician, and teaches him some beginning aspects of magic, which is referred to as sympathy, which I think is a real thing outside of this book. Like, I think that's not an uncommon name from magic.

Matt:   14:28
Interesting. Okay.

Erin:   14:29
There's some explanation about it, he wants Kvothe to eventually go to the academy, which is where people go to study magic. We learn that his parents are writing a song about the Chandrian, who you will remember from earlier were the demons. My understanding is that Scraelings are just kind of like monsters with sort of a demonic bent, whereas the Chandrian are more your named...

Matt:   14:49
Right - conscious demons?

Erin:   14:53
Yeah. So they're writing a song and Ben's like, "hey, maybe you shouldn't write a song about demons," and they're like, "it'll be fine."

Matt:   15:01
I think I see where this going? Okay, go on.

Erin:   15:03
Yeah, you can see where this is going.

Matt:   15:06
His parents are going to die.

Erin:   15:08
Yeah, they're getting there. There's also a lot of talk about how Kvothe is just the best, you know.

Matt:   15:12
As you do when you're telling a story from your own perspective?

Erin:   15:15
Exactly. Exactly. Ben's like, you know, he will be the best at whatever he chooses to do. Whether that's music or performance or magic.

Matt:   15:23
Or innkeeping.

Erin:   15:24
Or inkeeping which, it turns out, is the key, I guess. We go back to the framing device of them chatting in the inn. Chronicler is looking at Bast being like, there's something not right about this dude, and threatens him with iron. And Bast recoils, hissing, I imagine. And we learn that Bast is a member of a race called the Telwyth Mael - Telwyth Mile? - which are clearly supposed to be a fae-like race. Their name is very similar to the Telwyth Teg - Welsh fairy lore. We have no indication of what this means. Bast is the prince off them and has come to study with Kvothe. He's also like 150 years old.

Matt:   16:07
Interesting. So the 150 year old being trained by the 25 year old. So curious.

Erin:   16:14
It's very odd.  Also, this is the only reference we get to the Telwyth Mael in the novel.

Matt:   16:19
I see what you mean by the - kind of the fantasy races existing on the fringes and not really being delved into.

Erin:   16:28
The fae also the only one we get any reference to, I think, aside from the Chandrian, who are demon-ish, and also angels exist, maybe.

Matt:   16:37
Well, if he kills one.

Erin:   16:46
Yeah. He did something to an angel - that just sounds wrong. Anyway, there's all the stuff about how even as a child, he manages to outsmart Ben. But he does try to call on the wind and does almost get himself killed, because if you try to call on something, and you don't have enough energy, it just sucks the energy.

Matt:   16:58
Right.

Erin:   16:59
Eventually Ben leaves the troop and Kvothe is left just with his parents and the other people in the troupe. Eventually, there's an incident where a tree has fallen into the path of their wagon, so they're stuck and Kvothe kind of wanders off into the forest and he comes back and surprise, surprise, everyone is dead. Which we all we all saw coming, at least to some extent, the singing songs about the demons.

Matt:   17:26
No kidding. Again, kind of falls into the cliche of the hero being raised - family dead, you know, Harry Potter type thing.

Erin:   17:35
It feels very folkloric. Also, superstition, they should not be spoken of.

Matt:   17:39
Now, at this point is is he more of your earnest, competitive, simple, hardheaded hero main character? Is he a little more cunning? A little more - is he the Sasuke or the Naruto?

Erin:   17:53
What do you think at this point?

Matt:   17:55
Honestly, I don't know. He seems a little arrogant. He seems like - who wanders off from the wagon, right? Instead of trying to help,

Erin:   18:03
I think he was going to get wood or something. Like there was a purpose to him wandering, it's just one of those very coincidental things that he happens to wander off. And then everyone else gets murdered.

Matt:   18:13
Right, now he does seem a little bit like the simple earnest, hardheaded, you know, I'm just gonna my way or the highway.

Erin:   18:20
I think he's also meant to be around 13 at this point.

Matt:   18:23
That explains it.

Erin:   18:24
So this is sort of..

Matt:   18:26
The selfish teenager.

Erin:   18:27
Yeah, he's a teenager. So when he gets back the Chandrian are actually still there. So you get to look at them and they have very stereotypical kind of demon attributes. Like one of them has goat eyes, one of them has black eyes, and they're like, "Your parents were singing the wrong kinds of songs," which is...

Matt:   18:44
Casually threatening

Erin:   18:46
And they're gonna kill him, but then this other guy who's kind of in charge of them, his name is Lord Halliax -

Matt:   18:52
Excellent demon name.

Erin:   18:53
It is a good demon name. He's like, No, no, no, don't do it. Don't kill the boy. Don't know why, but they leave him alone.

Matt:   18:59
For the purposes of a plot device.

Erin:   19:01
For the purposes of this story, Kvothe is not murdered by some demons, you know, 120 pages in. So he travels through the wilderness. He's just got his father's lute, and he teaches himself to play it, and he's really good.

Matt:   19:12
Is he a Bard?

Erin:   19:14
He is kind of Bard-like, and I do appreciate that about his character, that there is like a strong musical component, which I think is kind of cool. It's not something you see often in heroes of fantasy stories. So I do think that's cool. He ends up going to a city. There's this whole thing where some boys tried to steal his lute and it gets broken. It is very sad because it was his father's lute, and then he's kind of trapped in the city, like there's nowhere else for him to go, really. So he just becomes a beggar on the street for three years.

Matt:   19:40
Right, like an Aladdin type of beggar? Is he a street rat?

Erin:   19:49
He is kind of a street rat, though he doesn't steal.

Matt:   19:52
You know, now that now that I'm kind of contextualizing the whole you know, street rat Bard type thinks highly of himself, kind of makes sense that he's the 25 year old, very arrogant, telling his story to a mythical history keeper.

Erin:   20:04
Yeah, and you're gonna you're gonna see this continue to go. He spends a lot of this time listening to storie,s because I guess we needed to get some world building in there. So there's a story about Fantasy Jesus, who is called Tehlu - which I'm referring to him as Fantasy Jesus because the story involves an immaculate conception.

Matt:   20:22
I see

Erin:   20:22
And Tehlu beat back the Lord of the Demons. We also learned that there is this drug called denner resin. This is not important now, but it will become important later, but we do get this dropped right there. We also hear the story of Lanre, and this is the song that Kvothe's father was writing when he was killed by demons. So the story is Lanre eventually became a demon called Halliax. Which was the name of the demon - yeah.

Matt:   20:47
Yeah, you saw my face there.

Erin:   20:50
I did see your face. I wasn't sure if it was confusion or understanding.

Matt:   20:53
A little column A little column B, to be honest, there have been a lot of names so far. So this was the Lord of the Demons who killed his family.

Erin:   21:01
Yes. So he eventually decides he's going to go to the university. The Academy.

Matt:   21:05
The Academy.

Erin:   21:06
I have "university" written down, it's basically a university, like it's it's not a high school. It's a school for magic, and it's definitely like, adults are there. It's not for children.

Matt:   21:16
For advanced degrees in magic.

Erin:   21:17
Exactly. It's not a Hogwarts situation, I guess, is what I'm trying to get across. You have to pay to go there, which will become a very large plot point cause what else do you want to read about other than fantasy characters managing their debt?

Matt:   21:29
I mean, at least I can relate.

Erin:   21:31
It's true. So there's a plot point about how he gets in a wagon. We have the first named female character, Rita - by the way, we're on page 235

Matt:   21:40
235, first female named character, right.

Erin:   21:43
There were some named female characters in the stories that I mentioned earlier, but I'm not counting them because they didn't appear on screen. This is the first on screen character. She's the wagoner's wife, and we also meet "The Girl."  We learn a couple of pages later her name is Denna, which is a little bit confusing that there is Denna and denner resin

Matt:
Unrelated.

Erin:
They're unrelated. So he and Denna bond. He asks her, "where you going?" And she doesn't know, but she's very charmed that he asked the question. And there's another subplot where there's another traveler who likes her too. The other traveler has a lute, and he ends up getting to borrow the lute and play again. There's this kind of funny confluence of things, because when he sees Denna, he describes her as the most beautiful thing he'd seen in three years and then, like three pages later, describes the lute as the most beautiful thing. I don't know if the implication is that the is more beautiful or what's happening,

Matt:   22:37
Sounds pretty good.

Erin:   22:39
So sorry, Denna, you get upstaged by a musical instrument. He ends up playing the lute for the assembled group of people who are travelling in this wagon, and it's really nice descriptions of him playing, which is which is cool. But also there's a kind of funny thing that he is the most amazing player ever, and it kind of it kind of reads like one of those tumbler posts from like 2012 where it would be like, "and then the whole class applauded." It kind of reads like that again, like we mentioned briefly like this is him telling his own story. I don't know how much we're meant to read him as an unreliable narrator.

Matt:   23:15
I mean, I embellish my stories.

Erin:   23:17
Yeah, like,  we all do it a little bit.

Matt:   23:19
And I'm almost a 25 year old man. So there you go, right?

Erin:   23:22
He goes to bed and cries and adult Kvothe has a line of like, "He was a child. He had yet to know what sorrow was." It's like his parents were murdered! What do you think sorrow is?

Matt:   23:34
No kidding.

Erin:   23:35
He gets to the academy and he manages to impress them, there's a bunch of questions they have. He very remarkably manages to remember all of the teaching that he got over three years ago from Ben, which is good. Also none of the Masters are women. There's nine masters, I think, who all teach a different discipline. None of them are women. This is not relevant, but -

Matt:   23:56
missed opportunity.

Erin:   23:57
It just kept being a bit of a Thing that I was noticing.

Matt:   24:00
A little thing, fair enough.

Erin:   24:00
He also has a line about, "If you admit me for free, I'll be a student unlike any you've ever seen before." Which is kind of cool as like a brag. But how are you feeling about this continual "Kvothe is the most awesome person in the world" kind of...?

Matt:   24:13
I don't know. Like I said, we haven't really heard about his feats yet. All we've heard is that he got mugged and his lute stolen and beat up, you know? And then he fell for a girl. And then he got into a school of magic and talked his way in using a silver tongue. I want to see some action. Now that being said, as the arrogant teenager, I kind of feel certain affinity for Kvothe. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but you know, it's...

Erin:   24:37
Without throwing aspersions, I do think you are probably more of the intended audience for this. So he gets admitted with a scholarship, basically, which is kind of cool. He has to pay room and board and like tuition is sort of dependent on how well you do in your studies. Again similar to a university. He meets some other students and befriends them. I wrote their names down there. Savoy, Simmon, and Willem, you can disregard those. They aren't important.

Matt:   25:04
Good. In one ear...

Erin:   25:06
If you thought you were going to then pick up the next book in the series, maybe that's important. I don't know. He meets this guy named Ambrose in the archives, and Ambrose is going to become his rival. And they immediately have a little conflict.

Matt:   25:21
Yeah. Would you say that he's his foil?

Erin:   25:26
Foil might be going a little bit far.

Matt:   25:28
Okay.

Erin:   25:29
He's definitely kind of the Draco Malfoy

Matt:   25:31
I love it already.

Erin:   25:32
to Kvothe's Harry Potter. He also has a line where he thinks about how wounded pride can spur a man to do wondrous things, which, has that ever been true?

Matt:   25:41
I was gonna say, wounded pride can spur a man to do a lot of horrible things.

Erin:   25:47
I believe it can spur a man to action. I think the adjective "wondrous" is not great.

Matt:   25:52
I was gonna say, historically...

Erin:   25:57
There's incident that, like, isn't important, but I wanted to talk about it because it just made me - you know, I'm just gonna tell you what happens, then we're gonna see what you think.

Matt:   26:04
Take this ride

Erin:   26:06
So we get the explanation that the ratio of men to women is 10:1 in the academy.

Matt:   26:11
Makes sense, given what we've heard.

Erin:   26:14
I mean, from the sounds of it, that's also the ratio of men to women in the world.

Matt:   26:18
That's right.

Erin:   26:19
So there's a female student in his first class, her name is Ria. The master of the class is this guy who was kind of a jerk to him in the initiation? The testing initially? The teachers name is Hemme. He's not very nice to anyone, but he sees Ria and is kind of nice to her, and then also makes her cross her legs and says, "the gates of hell are now closed."

Matt:   26:44
I see.

Erin:   26:45
And this goes completely un-commented on.

Matt:   26:48
Right, right. Okay, so only female students. And of course, yeah, the misogyny already starts.

Erin:   26:54
Like this teacher is definitely not meant to be a good dude, but like nobody stands up for this poor girl, she's never mentioned again. She's just there.

Matt:   27:03
Leave it to the creepy orofessor.

Erin:   27:06
So Kvothe is like, "well, I already know all of this. This class isn't teaching me anything interesting." After mentioning to Hemme, the teacher, being like, "I already know this, can I go up to the next level, please?" Because he's currently in like the entry level classes. Hemme tries to publicly humiliate him, basically, and tries to get Kvothe to teach the class. You know, that ol' chestnut.

Matt:   27:26
That's exactly right, "you know so much, why don't you come up here and teach the class?"

Erin:   27:31
And how do you think that goes?

Matt:   27:33
Poorly - really well? Does it go well? It goes really well. Covell is the best I see. Gotcha.

Erin:   27:40
It goes really well, because Kvothe is the best.

Matt:   27:42
I see, gotcha.

Erin:   27:42
I'm glad you're paying attention to the themes of the novel So he does a great job and manages to embarrass the teacher and also kind of set him on fire in the process.

Matt:   27:48
Right, as you do.

Erin:   27:49
As you do. The students think this is very funny, but the teacher doesn't, so he makes a complaint and accuses Kvothe of "harmful sympathy" and Kvothe is risking expulsion. He does manage to put the silver tongue to use and does,like a little bit of lying like, you know, "I didn't intend for anything to happen," even though he definitely did. He manages to wiggle himself out of most of the trouble and he gets admitted to the arcanum, which is sort of the proper level of university. He's learning proper magic now, rather than just the entry level stuff. Apparently, this usually takes years, but they're like, "well, you you did prove you knew what you were doing."

Matt:   28:31
You did light the teacher on fire. A student unlike any other.

Erin:   28:35
He also gets sentenced to a whipping. So that's good.

Matt:   28:38
Right. That's, sorry, that's good? Betraying a little bit of bias there, aren't we, narrator?

Erin:   28:47
It's more that - I mean, he did set the teacher on fire.

Matt:   28:49
Fair enough. I suppose it was a little...

Erin:   28:52
It's also only three lashes.

Matt:   28:54
Only three. Well, I mean, bring it on.

Erin:   28:57
I've never been whipped. I guess...

Matt:   29:01
Right. No comment.

Erin:   29:05
Afterwards, he gets stitched up by a young woman who says that his skin is beautiful.

Matt:   29:10
Slightly concerning coming from your surgeon.

Erin:   29:14
Just a little bit. What's the over-under on this young woman just becoming a serial killer down the line?

Matt:   29:19
Honestly no kidding. You have got such nice skins, right.

Erin:   29:25
Rothfuss, where's my spinoff novel about this woman becoming some kind of weird serial killer?

Matt:   29:30
Now that's something that's that's an idea worth sharing right there. Thanks for coming to the TedTalk.

Erin:   29:37
Anyway, so he's tired and in pain because he's just been whipped, but he goes to the archives and kind of half-heartedly stops Ambrose from assaulting a woman. So that's good, point in his favour. But Ambrose isn't super happy about this, and so he's like, "here, I will give you a candle to go into the archives with, instead of -" they usually use sort of magic lamps, flameless lamp. But Kvothe is tired, so he takes the candle and goes into the archives and gets super reamed out for it, because you shouldn't have an open flame library. And he is banned from the archives, which is a bummer, because that that was his main way of finding his parents'...

Matt:   30:18
Right, learning more information about the demons.

Erin:   30:21
Yeah, so we learned some back story about Ambrose, which is that he is the son of a Baron. So he's rich and powerful -

Matt:   30:27
Of course. Right. "My father will hear about this."

Erin:   30:30
Exactly. He also maybe killed a woman.

Matt:   30:33
Well, but I mean, you just kind of skimmed over the fact that he was sexually assaulting a woman, right? So...

Erin:   30:39
It is kind of skimmed over in the text as well.

Matt:   30:41
Also, considering that there's no female instructors and only one female student...

Erin:   30:46
Well, there are a couple of female students, in that particular class there was only one.

Matt:   30:50
I see. Okay, okay, in any case...

Erin:   30:52
Apparently the back story to this is that he promised to marry her and then didn't, and she complained about it, and then she just disappeared one day. And this is the last this is ever referenced. This never comes up again, right?

Matt:   31:05
Right. Ominous. Vaguely threatening.

Erin:   31:06
So Kvothe tries to get an apprenticeship under Elodin, who is the Master Namer. Elodin is like, "I don't take students anymore because most of them go crazy" and doesn't want to teach him. Kvothe is really adamant, he's like, "What can I do to prove to you that I will do this?" And Elodin is like, "how about you jump off this roof?" and he's like, "okay!" and does it. Elodin is like, "well, I'm not teaching you, because clearly you will do wild things I tell you to do."

Matt:   31:30
Again, a student like no other.

Erin:   31:33
A student like no other. I don't think we got a super clear time period, but this is definitely within like the first 6 months he's been here, he has set a teacher on fire and also jumped off a building. We go back to the framing device and there's some banter between our three bros Bast speaks up to tell us that the story is lacking and women which, I agree

Matt:   31:55
Good for - good on him.

Erin:   31:58
Hashtag feminism. And Kvothe corrects him that, actually, the story is missing THE woman. Then we get this very flowery description about, the woman is a wild thing, and she must be approached carefully. So we don't talk about the woman for a little bit longer.

Matt:   32:12
Right. Now, is this the woman that you referenced earlier?

Erin:   32:14
This is the same girl. We don't know that it's Denna yet, this fact is kind of obscured for a little while. There's sort of this ongoing plot thread about how Kvothe is poor, doesn't have enough money to pay for his second term of school. Even though many of his friends are rich, he doesn't ask them for help. He goes to a money lender instead, whose name is Devi. She's a former student, and she's actually really cool. She does like blood magic to kind of keep him - like as part of the money lending process so she can track him down if he defaults on his loan.

Matt:   32:47
I see.

Erin:   32:48
Which is kind of cool.

Matt:   32:49
Like a magical payday loan. Yeah, yeah.

Erin:   32:52
But don't worry - she's also pretty.

Matt:   32:54
Outstanding, outstanding, critical, crucial.

Erin:   32:57
And at first he doesn't want take it. But then he sees a really pretty lute that he wants and thinks like, "well, now I have to take the loan."

Matt:   33:04
This guy's got a thing for lutes.

Erin:   33:06
He does. We have another weird aside that we meet a different woman, who is not THE woman - she's supposed to be like 20 or older, which makes her older than he is, at least that the point in which this is occurring, but he refers to her as a girl, which is a little bit odd, but all right. She's gone "cracked" which is obviously a sign that she's not super mentally well. It's sort of implied that she used to be a student of the Master Namer and was one of the students that went crazy. She speaks really childishly, and she won't tell him her actual name so he calls her Auri. And he thinks of her as "his little moon fae," which, I've just written in my notes, "I vom."

Matt:   33:45
Indeed, I see.  I'm gonna take that and just lodge that one away for later.

Erin:   33:52
Just put a pin in that and we're going to come back to it. Probably. We don't learn how he met this girl. She lives beneath the university in like some tunnels or something. For someone who has gone into the very minutiae of most of this person's life, we do not get the story of how they met. Anyway, so we finally get the story about The Woman, which is that they go to a pub in the next city over and Kvothe goes to play, trying to get some money because there's like, wealthy patrons who come. He plays this super hard song, which is a duet, and he doesn't pick a duet partner. He just hopes someone will jump in.

Matt:   34:26
That's some wishful thinking right there.

Erin:   34:28
A little bit, but somebody does. Somebody pipes up to sing the woman's part. And she's perfect, and he plays really well and ends up getting his pipes, which means he can play there whenever he wants. And then he goes to find her the woman. And he does run into two men who hit on him. So some canon gays.

Matt:   34:44
Outstanding. Okay, yeah, mark that down. Check.

Erin:   34:48
We cut suddenly back out into the framing device, where they're debating on how to describe the woman. Kvothe clearly thinks she's the most perfect thing to have ever existed. Bast apparently met her once or saw her once. He says that she had perfect ears. Now is that a weirder compliment than the skin one?

Matt:   35:09
Honestly, honestly, it's approaching the skin one, not quite as threatening as the skin one, just a little unsettling.

Erin:   35:17
Just a little bit concerning. But Kvothe thinks that she's perfect, and Bast calls him out for thinking that every woman is beautiful, which has been a recurring theme.

Matt:   35:26
Indeed. No kidding. He's made a point, making sure everyone is beautiful. And I'd also like to point out the fact that the lead guitarist gets the girl. You know, that's absolute harkening back to that cliche. But go on.

Erin:   35:37
So we do get a little bit of a description of Denna. We get the knowledge that her lips are red, but not painted red, not like a slut, because, you know, you can't paint your lips, they just have to be naturally red. Of course it's Denna, who is the girl that he met at the caravan, or the wagon, which was probably only a few months ago. It was definitely less than a year ago, but they act like it's been a really long time. She also introduces herself as Diane, and he's a little bit confused, and she's also with one of his friends, but this doesn't really emerge into any real tension at any point. There's a whole bit where Ambrose, who is also at the pub because, of course he is, and he also plays the lute, because of course he does -

Matt:   36:18
Right.

Erin:   36:20
- he uses his connections so that Kvothe can't find a patron. And Kvothe ends up writing a song making fun of Ambrose and it spreads, and it gets really popular, everyone loves it. Although Ambrose tries to get him in trouble for it.

Matt:   36:34
"My father will hear about this!"

Erin:   36:35
Exactly exactly. There's this line of,  "this is the main reason that Ambrose eventually tried to kill me." So that's some good foreshadowing.

Matt:   36:42
Right, yeah, no kidding. Little Salieri there, love it.

Erin:   36:46
Then he meets with Denna. And there's a line about how she's like the wind that moves him. And I don't know if there's an intentional metaphor happening there.

Mat:   36:54
A little throwback to the title.

Erin:   36:56
Yeah, exactly, lik,e is that the name of the wind,  also trying to get the girl? I don't know if that's intentional.

Matt:   37:04
I bet it is.

Erin:   37:05
It's definitely there. There's a lot of tension spent on his financial situation. I don't know that we ever get a good clue about what it's like, which I guess is kind of the university experience, that he goes from spending exorbitantly to being completely destitute. So like, mood.

Matt:   37:19
Okay. No kidding, again. At least it's relatable. I'm impressed, the author managed to write a high fantasy novel and still include student debt.

Erin:   37:28
Yes, exactly. They finally have a conversation about how she's calling herself Diane, and she says, "Oh, I left Denna behind years ago." But like I said, I think it was less than a year ago that he met her at the wagon, so I don't know what that's about. But anyway, there's also this line of where he's talking to another guy at the bar who has known Denna for a while. And the bar dude is like, "Women are like flames, and she's like the spark off God's anvil."

Matt:   37:52
Wow. Poetic, though. Gonna remember that, slot that one away for later.

Erin:   37:56
Just if you need to bust out -

Matt:   37:58
That's exactly right.

Erin:   37:59
- some smooth lines ever. There's a workplace accident. He's mostly working at this point in the magical blacksmith-ery, where they used magic to make like, the lamps that I mentioned earlier that are flameless, among other things. And he gets to save a woman who works there because of course he does. It also burns off his shirt, which we are informed is the only shirt he owns, that he's been wearing since he left the city where he was a beggar. So what's that stank level at?

Matt:   38:30
I was gonna say, I wonder how often he washes it. It's an interesting detail. That's that part of the setting, it really is.

Erin:   38:37
I know this is a thing in Fantasy, and I mean, I'm sure it was true to medieval times, where people didn't have a lot of clothes, but he's been wearing the shirt for like a year, minimum.

Matt:   38:47
Right. Simple inandearnest.

Erin:   38:50
But it gets burned up. So I guess that's that problem solved. I think he gets a new shirt at some point.

Matt:   38:55
Don't have to wash it.

Erin:   38:59
The woman thanks him, and is like, "Wow, I was so dumb. I just stood there," and he's like, "No, it's okay. You're a strong woman."

Matt:   39:06
It's good that he gives her that validation. I appreciate that. You know that, again, check that token box there.

Erin:   39:14
Hashtag feminism. And, of course, while this woman is hugging him, Denna sees and thinks that it's a thing that it isn't, there's also some some explanation about how other women hate her because she's so much more complex. And it's just like, you know, that how other women be. Always be jealous.

Matt:   39:31
That's right. I think you're absolutely right when you say this was written - again, no disrespect to the author at all - but as you say, this probably was written by a man for young men.

Erin:   39:41
And specifically in 2009.

Matt:   39:43
Indeed, it may not have the most nuanced approach towards women and women's relationships.

Erin:   39:50
We do get a bit of an explanation that life kind of sucks for women, like they don't have a lot of options in the world.

Matt:   39:56
You don't say.

Erin:   39:56
So that's kind of nice. And she's a wandering spirit and sort of moves from man to man, but not in like a sex worker way, in just a flirty way, I guess. And that's sort of her way of not getting tied down to any of the typical roles of women.

Matt:   40:12
Okay, fair. Liberating.

Erin:   40:14
Yeah. So finally, we get some action, of assassins come for him. They were probably sent by Ambrose. I don't know if we ever get explicit confirmation of that, but like Ambrose sent them, we can assume that. He does get away. I think he kills one of them and, like, just wipes the floor with them with magic.

Matt:   40:29
Right, as you do.

Erin:   40:31
Yeah. And he finds a note that Denna has left town. And then he also overhears some people at the bar talking about a wedding at a town, a little ways away, where the wedding party was suddenly slaughtered. And also there was blue flame, which is lit the signs of the Chandrian. So he's like ah, another opportunity to investigate what happened to my parents. So he borrows some more money, he buys a horse, and that's a whole thing. They discuss what to name it, which, why fantasy novels, why you do this? Why you do this thing with horses?

Matt:   41:01
Well, full immersion.

Erin:   41:04
Fair, I guess. Anyway, so he gets a horse, gets to the town where this wedding happened. And he's told that there's one survivor of the wedding and, surprise, it's Denna who was at the wedding

Matt:   41:15
Inexplicable, inexplicably are - okay.

Erin:   41:18
She mentions that she's got this wealthy patron who told her to go there, and he's kind of sketchy, but we don't get any more information about him in this book.

Matt:   41:27
Now, if we could just - this sounds like we should be solidly into the book by now.

Erin:   41:29
We're definitely solidly into the book by now.

Matt:   41:31
Okay, I was gonna say, he hasn't even graduated yet. We're still waiting for these great feats. We are still waiting for these great feats, right? Go on.

Erin:   41:41
We're racing at this point towards the end of the book, and we're now just off in the middle of nowhere at the remains of this wedding. And they both sort of go to the site where the wedding was, and they're sort of picking around, Denna is trying to find her patron because he disappeared the wedding and he definitely knew something was up. But obviously, we don't hear Dennis side of the story, so we don't know exactly what. While they're searching around in the woods, they run into this pig farmer, who has this really ridiculous hick accent, and it's written out phonetically in the book. I need you to picture Hagrid, like how Hagrid's speech is written in Harry Potter, but multiply that by 10 in terms of how unreadable it is. Like it absolutely slows to a crawl every time he speaks, and in order to fit in, both of them also take on hick accents.

Matt:   42:33
Outstanding. For your reading pleasure.

Erin:   42:36
Oh goodness. Apparently, according to my e-reader, this only goes on for eight pages. It feels like it goes on for about 30. As I have said a couple times, I think Pat Rothfuss is a cool guy. I will never forgive him from making me sit through this.

Matt:   42:53
You know what, on behalf of our hopefully potential listeners, and on behalf of myself, I thank you for sparing me that that torment. You're a martyr.

Erin:   43:03
We learn from the bumpkin that -

Matt:   43:05
The bumpkin.

Erin:   43:06
The bumpkin! That the person building the house - the wedding was at this house that was recently built, and we learn that while they were digging the foundations, they dug up something. And they also see some blue fire far away. And they're like, "Oh, Chandrian."

Matt:   43:20
That not good.

Erin:   43:21
And so they inexplicably go towards it. It's not the Chandrian, it's actually a dragon.

Matt:   43:27
Right, okay. As you do, go on.

Erin:   43:30
Not a very exciting dragon, so don't get your hopes up too far. It's compared to a cow, I think more in mechanics. I think it's bigger than a cow.

Matt:   43:40
Right, I should hope so.

Erin:   43:41
But it's definitely not massive dragon size. It's - I was sort of picturing something elephant-sized.

Matt:   43:47
Right, more of more of a Wyvern, I'm thinking.

Erin:   43:50
King of, and it's vegetarian. And there's even a scientific explanation of why it breathes fire, which is why it's compared to a cow, because it has to do with the methane gas.

Matt:   44:00
Hot take on dragons.

Erin:   44:01
It is kind of hot take. It's not a very exciting take, but it is a fresh take. We also learned that Kvothe knows some stuff about dragons because he read a book by Chronicler, so that's a fun little...

Matt:   44:12
That is a fun little...

Erin:   44:14
They find a farm that they think is for maple syrup, but then they realized that it's denner resin, which we will remember, us the drug from earlier.

Matt:   44:21
How deadly is this, like opium? Or like the less hard, you know, kind of harmless kind of stuff.

Erin:   44:29
It's definitely in the vein of opium, heroin, that kind of stuff. We're never given a super clear understanding of how dangerous it is. But Denna takes a big bite out of it because there's discs of it and she thinks it's maple syrup and just takes a big bite out of it.

Matt:   44:44
Enjoy.

Erin:   44:47
Like as she's taking the bite Kvothe is like, "noooo" and makes her spit it out. And he makes her eat some coal. He threatens to knock her out if she doesn't eat the coal, which not cool.

Matt:
What does this drug do?

Erin:
I don't know but coal is like, a detoxifier - like I think it is legitimately a thing you can take if you have eaten something that you shouldn't have. They also figure out that the dragon has been eating the denner resin. So not only is it just a chill cow-like animal, it's also high and addicted. They decide that they're going to poison it using the resin because it's kind of dangerous.

Matt:   45:25
The dragon.

Erin:   45:26
The dragon is yeah, because it's eventually gonna run out of resin, and then it's gonna go looking for more, and it could wander into the town. There's this very long process of them deciding how much of the resin to give it because they also want to try and take some for themselves so they can sell it.

Matt:
Right? Ethical?

Erin:
Yeah, our heroes.

Matt:   45:43
That's right, that's right. You know, gotta hustle, gotta pay that tuition.

Erin:   45:48
I guess so. They prepare the drug for it. Meanwhile, him and Denna chat. And she's slowly but surely getting higher and higher. To his credit, she hits on him and he's like, "No, we're not going to do that. That's not cool."  That's nice. They chat a little bit about how she was struck by him asking her where she was going when they first met back in the wagon. And she doesn't think he's attracted to her, which is kind of wild. So the dragon shows up, it eats the resin that they have left for it. It doesn't die immediately, but it does notice that there's a harvest festival happening at the nearby town and is like, "hmm."

Matt:   46:21
Oh, no. "What's that?" High and hungry.

Erin:   46:23
Yeah. High and hungry. Denna is passed out, she's sleeping off the drug. He cannot wake her up so he goes after the dragon to try to save the town.

Matt:   46:33
The vegetarian dragon.

Erin:   46:34
Vegetarian dragon, but it still could breathe fire. So I guess...

Matt:   46:37
Definitely dangerous.

Erin:   46:38
Kvothe manages to kill it. He collapses some stuff on it and also gets himself hurt in the process. But he saves the town, which is cool, wakes up the next day. And there's this weird bit where he's being tended to by a pretty girl, but also she's just a "basic inn girl," and, you know, she's destined for a certain kind of life, which is always living in the inn, I guess, which is just It's one of those things that, like why are we just hitting this wall over and over?

Matt:   47:04
Again. There's a cruel irony there, too, since he ends up living and working in an inn.

Erin:   47:10
And I don't know if that's meant to be kind of like "these inn girls" and then dramatic irony. So he tries to grab food and wine to go back to Denna with, but she's gone by the time he gets back to where they were camping, I guess she thought he abandoned her. He goes back to town kind of sad, and everyone's like, "you killed a dragon, that's pretty cool." And he's uses this this admiration to find out what they dug up at the farm where the wedding took place. And we find out that it was a vase with some pictures on it, which were probably the Chandrian, which seems like a very strange thing to have killed an entire wedding for. But, I mean, his parents did also get murdered for singing a song. So I guess we can't...

Matt:   47:51
Well, I mean, demons be demons, right?

Erin:   47:54
Demons gonna demon. He's told this by a young girl, we're told that she's about 13, but don't worry, the girl is beautiful. She's only 13, but she's beautiful.

Matt:   48:00
I was just gonna say - so it goes.

Erin:   48:04
And he thinks to himself how, or at least present Kvothe narrating this in what is the future, says that this was the first moment he felt like a hero. So how are you feeling about Kvothe?

Matt:   48:15
I think that you have established that he may be a bit of an unreliable narrator. Very curious to see how this story escalates, because so far, the only real feet is killing a cow-like, vegetarian, dragon, who was very high. So not that that's not impressive. A student like none other. Truly.

Erin:   48:36
So he goes back to the university. He runs into Denna again, and she has a new man. He has another conflict with Ambrose, where Ambrose breaks his lute, which is a recurring -

Matt:   48:46
Story.

Erin:   48:48
Kvothe calls the wind. It takes a lot out of him and Elodin, who we remember is the master namer, and he helps him get control over it. And it's fine. And there's this whole bit where Ambrose tries to put a grievance against him. They expel him from the university and then also un-expel him, and they level him up.

Matt:   49:05
This guy's got some Harry Potter luck.

spk_0:   49:07
It is wild to read, and also Elodin approves of him to teach him some naming stuff. So we get a resolution to that. There's this story that starts wherein Auri, who is the woman who lives beneath the university, she's going to take him below the university, and show him something. And then we cut away to the framing device were some customers have interrupted story time, and they want to chat about the legends of Kvothe. And also this guy shows up and Chronicler recognizes him as one of the soldiers who mugged him on the road earlier. But he is all messed up, he is absolutely possessed, like he's ranting and raving and wildly going about the inn. Bast is the only person who's like, "something doesn't seem right about this dude."

Matt:   49:54
Yeah, Bast seems like the sharpest character here.

Erin:   49:57
He does. But they end up killing this possessed man. So back in the story, with some more build up to what's below the university. The resolution is that it's a secret way into the archives, which he is still banned from, but now he has a way in. He keeps seeing Denna, but she decided that he doesn't have any interest in her, so he can be her best friend, but not her romantic interest. He's not happy with that, but he is kind of into being like a clear threat to these men who are dating her. He's like, "Sure, you've kissed her, but I make her laugh." He kind of has like a terminal case of Nice Guy Syndrome.

Matt:   50:32
I was just about to say he's falling into the trope of the nice guy, and this is pretty on brand, for what I've learned about him so far.

Erin:   50:40
Yeah, it's definitely not out of character for him to have fallen to these tropes. There's this whole thing about how she's actually very hurt by this whole state of affairs wherein men fall for her, which again is very much a hallmark of men writing women, like it's such a hardship that  men are always falling for her. And, of course, it's why Kvothe is valuable to her, cause he's her friend and he's not gonna hit on her, which, yeah, we can see some problems there.

Matt:   51:09
See how that plays out.

Erin:   51:10
Well, we won't. But maybe if if we/you read The Wise Man's Fear. It's explained that she leaves men because she's a wild thing, she's like a storm. So we get a tease about how Ambrose will "have his revenge" and then we're done! Well, we're done the story within the story.

Matt:   51:30
Okay, that's the note that we leave it on.

Erin:   51:32
We get a bit of an epilogue where Bast visits Chronicler in the middle of the night, which is not as exciting as it sounds. There's a lot about how -

Matt:   51:43
I was gonna say - sorry, hold on, backup, Bast visits Chronicler in the - Chronicler?

Erin:   51:47
And I don't know how old Chronicler's supposed to be, but definitely older.

Matt:   51:51
Right, you - go on, just gonna let that simmer.

Erin:   51:53
Bast says that he actually was the one to spread the rumours that Kvothe was hiding out in this town because he wanted Chronicler to come, because Kvothe is "wasting away." Bast threatens him to like keep him on track, but also not to let him talk too much about the dark stuff because I guess that will make him sadder. Bast sort of wants him to regain his former glory. And then we have a callback to how the inn is very silent, and one of the silences is Kvothe's silence of a man waiting to die, and that's the end.

Matt:   52:24
And that's where we end, where we began. Okay, okay. Come full circle.

Erin:   52:29
Now that we've summarized that monster of a book, what are your thoughts on what we have just gone through?

Matt:   52:34
Boy, what are my thoughts? You know, there's a lot to cover. I think that as the uninformed listener here, you definitely conveyed the feeling of the book to me. You've conveyed the emotions that you felt throughout. I definitely can relate to some things. And I agree with your analysis that the intended audience is probably more me than you. As I said, you've established Kvothe as unreliable narrator, and I'm curious to see if you ever learn the origin of some of these myths, see if they are closely related to the truth at all or if they're heavily embellished.

Erin:   53:10
I think we get some acknowledgement within the story about how the killing of the dragon was embellished in later retellings of the story. Obviously, we have not gotten to a lot of the bigger issue things, like speaking to God. His title is Kingkiller, so I imagine that will come up.

Matt:   53:30
Yeah, well, if it doesn't, then...

Erin:   53:34
I guess it might not come up until the third book, but I have to assume that at some point he did kill the king. Oh, and I didn't mention this in my summary, but the "bloodless" thing does come back. I know we touched on that earlier, but basically, when he's getting whipped for setting the teacher on fire, he takes a potion or a plant of some kind that makes it so that he doesn't bleed, I think also so he doesn't really feel the pain of it, which is definitely kind of cheating. But it's It's to give him a good reputation, basically.

Matt:   54:03
Again, kind of going back to my initial thoughts. He seems like less so much your exceptional wayward adventurer who's good at everything, and more just a guy who's silver tongued, a little bit cunning, good at good framing. Maybe that's why I kind of feel a bit of an affinity for him, you know, which I don't think I should, let me clarify. I don't think Kvothe is necessarily a good guy here.

Erin:   54:28
I do appreciate some of those aspects of this character, like I do think it's interesting to have a protagonist who is very cunning and very silvertongued because those are typically villainous aspects. They're kind of feminized aspects, as well, which, I mean those things kind of go hand in hand. But, you know, think of characters who tend to get those monikers, my thought goes to Loki from the Marvel Universe. I don't know why that was my first jump to, but...

Matt:   54:56
Is that similar to you? Is that how you read it as well?

Erin:   54:59
Yeah, like of him being...

Matt:   55:01
Kind of the the cunning storyteller?

Erin:   55:03
Yes, absolutely. His specialties aren't the traditional male fantasy hero specialties like, he's good at magic and he's good at music, and he's very charismatic. He's very cunning and specifically like, good at lying, good at performing, which is kind of interesting.

Matt:   55:21
Yeah, and I see what you mean about the coming of age story in a in a fantasy setting and as well, again, going back to the beginning about the different characters in that he is telling his own story from his perspective in the future as the framework of the plot. He's kind of the wayward adventurer and the wise old man, he's kind of a lot of those gaps in there. Yes, definitely pretty central character.

Erin:   55:45
Yeah, it is interesting that he is telling his own story. I'm always interested in the mechanics of that within storytelling, of actually looking at what it means to be a storyteller. I mean, we're both Hamilton fans, we could probably make that connection a little bit.

Matt:   55:59
Yeah, maybe that's what it's really all about, that storytelling framing about, not the victor writes history, because that's not quite what this is. But along those lines, yeah.

Erin:   56:10
And you know, for better for worse, what it means to tell your own story, cause, like, in some respects, there's something to be said for the agency that comes from being able to tell your own story. But also, as we have talked about to some length, what it means when you are wildly embellishing and I don't, again, I have no idea of how much we're supposed to take him as an unreliable narrator. I have no idea how much he is embellishing stuff. Like I said, I paid attention to parts where those kind of seemed to be very like "Kvothe is the best ever at everything."

Matt:   56:38
You know, I think I may have contradicted myself because I called him both simple and earnest and cunning and silver-tongued. I think he is perhaps cunning and silver-tongued, yes, but as a function of his arrogance, I think, is what it is, which goes in hand with being simple and earnest. I think that's that's kind of my take away from his character as a 13 year old and as a 25 year old recounting his story, curious to see where it goes if we ever pick it up.

Erin:   57:07
Yeah, if we pick up the second one. My goal is not necessarily to do sequels, necessarily, but there may be something coming down the pipe.

Matt:   57:16
Coming down the pipeline.

Erin:   57:17
For those listening.

Matt:   57:19
Stay sharp. Yeah,

Erin:   57:21
I am curious, also, just to see what you think of it in terms of as a fantasy novel, like it is in some ways very high fantasy, a bit of a subversion in some ways. How does this compare to Game of Thrones? And how does it compare to other high fantasy stuff?

Matt:   57:35
He's definitely taking his liberties, definitely, which I think is great and refreshing. Admittedly, I have not read - surprise - the Game of Thrones series.

Erin:
You've seen the show.

Matt:
I have, I have, which we won't get into, but how does it stand up. Well, Game of Thrones has a lot of powerful, but not necessarily cruel, female characters. Game of Thrones, I think, and I did not think that I would be complimenting George R. R. Martin today - but I mean in comparison...

Erin:   58:07
Yeah, the women in Game of Thrones do definitely have more agency than - don't know if agency is the right word, cause Denna is definitely doing her own thing. But she definitely feels a bit like a manic pixie dream girl. She definitely feels like the prize to be won. She is not the protagonist, and that's pretty clear. And neither are any of the other women, you know, neither is Auri. That's kind of the only other important female character.

Matt:   58:33
That speaks for itself. I have to say I'm glad that they didn't try to make the protagonist. Well, maybe they did try to make the protagonist a bit of a Mary Sue. I think that his arrogance betrays him, and I like that personally. I find that a little relatable.

Erin:   58:49
I was definitely frustrated by the constant barrage of "Kvothe is the best ever", especially for 700 pages.

Matt:   58:59
Again, I appreciate the the emotional and intellectual labour to finish it on our behalf. Thank you.

Erin:   59:06
The other question I just wanted to touch on is,  Do you think of Kvothe has an arc in this book? Like I described it earlier as a coming of age story, but I'm not sure that that's accurate.

Matt:   59:16
He's telling the story as a 25 year old, has he come to age? Really, you're - I don't know what the arc is, is it going to school? Is it trying to hunt down these demons? If so, that's not particularly explicit. There's romance sprinkled in here and there, and he slays a dragon. So I think coming of age is probably the most accurate way that you could do it.

Erin:   59:38
He does grow up. Time passes.

Matt:   59:40
I mean slightly, he grows. I don't know if you physically grow. I don't know if he could be considered an adult, at that point. I mean, to his credit, the man runs his own inn. So fair enough. But at the same time, it seems like he's got some maturing to do. And all of this taken with a grain of salt, of course, because the speaker currently is a 24 year old man and Kvothe is a 25 year old man, so I'm really in no place to be calling him childish. That's where I'm at.

Erin:   1:0:07
As a 25 year old, when he's telling the story, he's definitely a little bit more subdued, but we don't get any of the information about the events that brought him to that place. So that sort of wraps up our discussion.

Matt:   1:0:19
But there it is, the Name of the Wind. First one done!

Erin:   1:0:23
And I promise that for our next selection, I will choose something that is not quite as long. I'm saying this like it's happening in the future, I have already picked and read the book we will be reading next. For those wanting to read along at home, we will be reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, which is also a high fantasy novel. But coming at it from a pretty different place.

Matt:   1:0:41
Folks. Thank you so much for listening. This episode may have been little on the longer side. The intent is for them to be perhaps not bite-sized, but easily swallowable and digestible pieces of fiction for you to sink your teeth into.

Erin:   1:0:53
If you want more of this -

Matt:   1:0:55
Which, if you enjoyed it, if you enjoyed and laughed along with, feel free to rate us on Spotify, iTunes, or however it is that you engage with your podcasts. Share the word, spread the good news, drop a like and subscribe in a comment below, you know, yada yada.

Erin:   1:1:11
If you want to hear more from me, I'm Erin Rockfort, I'm on Twitter @pineapplefury. Fury as in the emotion and also the...ancient...Greek...woman.

Matt:   1:1:21
Let that simmer. Just gonna let that hang in the air. And I'm Matt Thomas, and you can't reach me.

Erin:   1:1:27
Thanks for tuning in, and we will catch you next time.

Matt:   1:1:29
We'll be back again with another exciting episode of the Brodacious Book Club. Adios!