Oi!!!

I must grumble and complain!!! To the Bat Cave *points*

So, I'm reading The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, second in his trilogy after The Name of the Wind.

Ok, I had one gripe about the first book and that was that it went absolutely nowhere. It was highly entertaining, with a great world and characters, but nothing really happened. It introduced everything for a second volume that would get things going. I'm about 3/4 through with the second book and unfortunately it seems to have the exact same problem.

While the Wise Man's Fear is highly entertaining at parts, and very funny, NOTHING IS HAPPENING AT ALL!!! I have two gripes this time around. THe first is the mystery of the love interest. The author is dragging it out and dragging it out and draaaaaaaaaagging it out WAY longer than is necessary. I get it, she's terribly mysterious, GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!!! He drags out the fact that the main character knows nothing at all about her, and she's so hard to find, and she's working for someone shady, and he can never find her when he wants to, and they feel for each other, but they shouldn't, and they're too young to realize it, and blah blah blah, and it's becoming incredibly distracting and frankly painful to trudge through, I've even considered skipping any and all parts with her because they're annoying me too much. No one is THIS stupid when it comes to dating, seriously. there's no reason for all of this and I really want to give the writer a good kick for it. Yes, I get the whole building sexual tension thing, but there's a limit to how far you can and should take it. When the readers start rooting for her to die because they're sick of her, you've taken it MUCH too far.

My second gripe is this. At first this book seemed to really be going somewhere, making up for the last book's lack of any real climax, though entertaining, nothing really happened, and it really got to me in my second read through of it. Now that I'm looking out for it, the same thing is happening in this book. It's a great book, don't get me wrong, but nothing is happening. It is about nothing. The writer has made a great world, and excellent characters, and given them nothing to do. He hints at great events in the main character's life, but never takes any steps closer to them. I just finished a 200 page long side story that led absolutely nowhere except a realization that the character made halfway through that could have come at any other point in the story.

Anyway, I had to complain, because this series is so promising, but the writer seems to be ruining it with his inability to come up with an interesting storyline to go with his characters and world. Oh well, there's still 200 pages left, so I guess he's got time to pull things into a great conclusion in this book, but things are not looking good for it.

Sooooo, from this post you might think that I hate this book, but I don't. Those are just two complaints I have about it. In fact I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit, despite my grumbling about its faults. If there's only two things to complain about that are relatively minor things, then it's a pretty good book. It's written so well, and the characters really are very entertaining, and the author has a great sense of humor. He just drags some things out way too long for comfort.