Book Review: The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The story within the story is one of the oldest formats in storytelling; probably the most famous were the stories that Scharezade spun for 1,001 nights to keep her and her sister alive in The Tales From Arabian Nights, yet to do it well requires probably more skill than just telling a story. First of all it means you have to be able to keep your audience interested in a minimum of two story lines, that of the storyteller, and that of the story the storyteller is telling.

The real difficulty is keeping interest alive in the story that has motivated the story telling. Of course there are exceptions, like in Coleridge's "The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner," where no one gives a rat's ass about the wedding guest who the Mariner corners with his tale, but in general there needs to be some sort of dynamic connecting the two threads of story that sustains our interest in the overall story. Otherwise the author runs the risk of her reader losing interest, or failing to keep track of, the reason for the story being told in the first place.

Of course one way is to have the storyteller recounting his own history, but that creates its own sets of challenges for an author. Coming up with a reason for the story to be told is of course important, but if the author has any intent of going on with the story, how well he is able to blend the past and the present in order to create interest in the future is just as necessary. There has to be something about the story being told that will convince a reader there is the potential for something interesting still to come for the current time period. While it's interesting enough to find out the character's history, there's no real suspense involved as he or she are obviously going to come out of the story alive as they are the one telling it.

In the first book of his The Kingkiller Chronicle series, The Name Of The Wind, a DAW Books publication distributed by Penguin Canada being released as a mass market paperback on April 3, 2008, Patrick Rothfuss takes up just that challenge as he begins the story of Kvothe. As is the case with most fantasy books these days the setting is a world with basic agrarian technology where magic is used in place of science, and an ancient evil has faded into myth and memory.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and The Unofficial Heroes Of Olympus Companion, both published by Ulysses Press. He has had his work published in print and online all over the world including the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and www.Qantara.de. …

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