sawyl | The Name of the Wind (Reply)

Talking about Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of Wind in the introduction to her detailed re-read for Tor, Jo Walton says "If you like fantasy at all, you will enjoy it." Which makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me. My first attempt failed and I stopped midway through, beset by a complete lack of interest. My second attempt successfully carried me to the end of the book, where shock of shocks something actually happened, but it didn't kindle any enthusiasm and I was left with a feeling of profound indifference.

Clearly I am missing something. Those whose judgment I normally consider reliable esteem it highly. I can see why it ought to work and why it ought to be exactly the sort of thing to appeal to me. But the sad fact is, I just didn't connect with it. At. All.

Now I face a dilemma. Do I read the sequel — which, given that its even longer than the first book, offers the prospect of being an even greater slog — in the hope that everything snaps into focus and I finally get it? Or do I write the thing off entirely and move on to something else entirely, as I did with Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle after realising that there was no way I was even going to make it to the end of Quicksilver let alone read another two volumes in a similar vein...