Adult Fantasy: The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

About the Book: What happens to legendary heroes when they grow tired of saving everyone? How do you motivate a hero? How does someone go from being an ordinary, albeit talented child to being the greatest hero in a generation? The Wise Man's Fear is Day Two of the back story of the legendary hero Kvothe.

My Thoughts: Again relayed mostly through a series of flashbacks, this story continues to be fun fast paced and exciting. Rothfuss reclaimed his wonderful writing style and again the voice clearly changes when he is writing in the past versus writing in the present. Kvothe is flushed out much more as a character, but his story takes a darker and more dangerous turn. Adult relationships flourish in all of their complexity. While there were a couple breaks in voice as the book went on, for the most part Rothfuss quickly brought the story back to where I expected it to be. My biggest problems are that the middle of the book is a sexual romp in a fairy realm and the story seems to be progressing too slowly. I can handle sex in a book, but it seemed like 200 pages of the book was devoted to sex, it just kind of dragged on and on. The other problem with progressing too slowly is this. In the present, Kvothe is around 30 years old. By the end of the second book, he is not even twenty in his flashbacks. That means in the next book he has to cover 10 years worth of back story and I am not sure how he is going to do it.

Since this series is called The KingKiller Chronicle, I am hoping that the series will be longer than a trilogy. I have not heard how many books this series is scheduled for, but I image it will take at least 2 more.

Overall this book was very good and had a much better ending. Rothfuss has won me back and I well be impatiently awaiting the next book. I give it a 7 out of 10.