SlowReader's Kingdom

Let me first state that I love Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind. Let me state that I have been waiting anxiously for the book series to continue. Let me then state that I was not happy when The Slow Regard of Silent Things came out because I don’t like novellas and I feel cheated. I’m becoming impatient with Rothfuss. I want him to finish the series because I am starting to forget what was important (let me tell you, the books are huge with a massive amount of information). Now when I saw this novella at my local library as a new released audiobook I wanted to give it a try. Now let me state:

What a waste of time!

I am so glad I did not spend a single cent on this book. I love Auri and find her character very interesting. But I do not want to read a boring book about her boring days of her moving something somewhere else and back. This story had no purpose whatsoever.

What got me even more outraged was Rothfuss epilogue in which he pretty much said, that he knows that many readers will be disappointed with the book and that basically they are too dumb to understand the meaning of the story. That this book is so special that only an elite of people will understand it. Excuse me?! This epilogue made everything worse. He even says all the things why this should not be sold as a published book but decides to do it anyway under the disguise that only smart people will see the true meaning of it. So now if I say I did not like the book I can count myself into the group of people to stupid to get the “beauty” of this book?! Sorry, Rothfuss, but that is not how it works.

I still think Rothfuss is an amazing writer but I’m starting to get the feeling that he is over-estimating himself. He is riding high on the praise he got for the Kingkiller’s Chronicles but he forgets to back up the praise. There are so many amazing writers out there and if he is not careful he will get forgotten just because he could not finish his book.

I understand the wish of an author to write stories about their characters that might not fit in the actual book. But if it had just been for that, if he just wanted to write something different, then he should have just published it on his website for free. His fans would have loved it and everyone not liking it would have just shrugged it off. But asking for an outrageous amount of money for a story that is not really one is the fastest way to piss off your fans.