A Wise Man’s Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles) (Patrick Rothfuss) 3/3

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Questions

Felurian only lets Kvothe go back to the human world because he promises to return and sing the song he’s writing for her. Is this why Kvothe doesn’t play music anymore, so he never finishes the song?

In the first book, Kvothe was furious when Chronicler found him because he was worried that other people would come after him. People like Felurian, perhaps? I’d say that’s a decent reason to hide.

Obviously being ‘the Kingkiller’ is already a good reason to hide but compared to the rest of this story, it would be rather mundane.

 

We learn that the highest ranking members of the Amyr (church knights) were fae. We also know that Haliax, the leader of the Chandrian, protects his subordinates from the Amyr.

Skarpi knew the (heretical) story of Haliax’s ‘creation’ and he said he had powerful friends in the church. Friends like the Amyr?

Also in this book Denna writes a song about the Chandrian but she doesn’t get killed like Kvothe’s troupe, so are the Amyr protecting her? Is her patron an Amyr? Is he is, then I’d guess he’s Skarpi.

This is vividly different from my thoughts in book one, in that Denna or at least her patron are Chandrian. I’m still more convinced by the Chandrian hypothesis than the Amyr hypothesis but either is believable.

 

Content Warning: sexual assault. [‘Skip to Kvothe often says, and demonstrates, how…’]

Remember Ambrose’s alchemised drink that made Kvothe lose all inhibitions? The constant humour? It came with a serious side. Sim was surprised that Kvothe was 100% sure that you shouldn’t ravage women. Fela said she thinks she knows why. When Kvothe is in Felurian’s glade later on, he has a memory of when he was in Tarbean with boys ripping his clothes off and saying everything they’d do to him. This sounds like a rape.

We’ve known since book one, when Denna in a delirium kept on offering Kvothe sex but he refused because she wasn’t in her right mind, that he has very strong moral views on rape. In book two, Kvothe saves two girls from sexual enslavement: he reassures them it’s not their fault and challenges everyone who insults them for being victims.

Of course, one doesn’t have to experience rape to defend the victims. I could be reading too much into it and stringing together unrelated information. Even though Kvothe is a fictional character, I still hope I’m wrong.

 

Kvothe often says, and demonstrates, how good he is at lying and embellishing. Is anything he’s telling the Chronicler true? Or is he building the best reputation he can, to silent rival rumours. He’s started many contradictory rumours about himself so it is within his character to do this.

 

 

Problems

Occasionally, queries pop up. Some things are simply mistakes, oversights or errors.

There’s an inn with one fiddler. The same Innkeeper calls this same fiddler ‘Seb’ and ‘Ben’. He doesn’t give anyone else two names. So this was a bit perplexing.

The similes are in the American style, e.g. ‘soft as a flower’. But then later we get one in the British style: ‘as lightly as a flower’. Why is there this difference? From s tyle point of view, it should be one or the other. Unless Americans do use both but they have different functions? Like how Americans have ‘farther’ instead of ‘further’ bar a few exceptions?

Kvothe studies lesson called ‘comparative female anatomy’. Because Kvothe is such a sexualised character by this point, this almost comes off as a pervert’s subject. From a medical perspective it’s important but it seems misplaced for it to be mentioned here. Perhaps the author’s shoehorning a piece of lore in where he can?

 

Kvothe frequently has sex in this book. ‘The Wise Man’s Sexploits’ may have been a more fitting title.

You wonder how he makes no one pregnant until he reveals he chews a specific herb every day. When did he start that? He was too blind and bashful pre-Felurian to people’s advances so I doubt he started it before he met her.

So perhaps Felurian had him eat it in her glade. But the Fae’s flora was very different to the ordinary world so could the herb grow in both places? Would Kvothe have the foresight to pluck a lifetime’s worth of herb before he left for the human world?

If it did grow everywhere, it probably wouldn’t manage to in inhospitable Ademre. The Adem wouldn’t sell it because they don’t believe in man-mothers (and the apothecary wouldn’t serve Kvothe anyway).

Maybe Kvothe did start chewing it at the university, in his world’s version of a condom in the wallet for the young and hopeful? But he was poor and only made necessary purchases.

There are answers to my questions but none is satisfying or convincing.

 

 

Conclusion

When Kvothe returns to the University, he says he’s been gone three-quarters of the year. Devi says he has two months left until his debt is due; the loan was for a year and a day. Thus there are eight months in the year. So the author, with a few bits of info, has told the readers how long a year is without ever directly stating it.

 

Kvothe’s tale concludes with a happy Kvothe with happy friends before returning to the miserable Kote of the present. By telling his story, Kote is becoming frustrated with his carefulness. Just as Bast wanted. Bast also wanted two soldiers to attack Kote and bring out his fighting abilities. His fighting abilities did not oblige. So the story ends with Bast standing over the soldiers and about to, I assume, kill them. It’s not a big or important cliff-hanger but I’m still curious!

 

So yes, this was a satisfying read. It was over a thousand pages long but at no point did it feel drawn out, weak or boring. To keep a narrative going for that long without losing the thread is impressive. Book two, the first sequel in this trilogy, took five years to release so it would be nice if the second sequel took no more than ten years to be released. (This time is almost up!) But rushing would only degrade the quality and that’s not desirable, although considering the high quality already this wouldn’t be too bad. Whatever the case, it should be worth the wait.

 

A Wise Man’s Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles) (Patrick Rothfuss) 2/3

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Kvothe Goes Adventuring

 

Threpe, a minor noble, send Kvothe off to see the Maer of Vintas (who’s descended from the old line of Vintas kings). Threpe tells Kvothe to ‘”address him as your grace.”’ No, ‘Your Grace’ in quotation marks (because that’s what Kvothe’s being told to say) and capitals (because it’s a style).

            Who else do we find in Vintas other than Denna! She appears wherever Kvothe is and their bond deepens. He tells Denna what he’s already told the Chronicler: her gift of lute case saved Kvothe’s lift. But we get no explanation as to how!

            Kvothe and Denna have an argument that became cruel in the space of a breath. That was bizarre. The Maer’s attitude to people similarly swung with such erratic ways. I didn’t make many notes on Kvote’s time at the Maer’s court because I was too engrossed. I love (fictional) political intrigue.

 

The Maer send Kvothe with mercenaries into the Eld forest to retrieve the stolen taxes.

It’s said that the Eld is as big as Vintas. But looking on the map, the Eld could fit inside Vintas at least twice. We don’t even see the edge of Vintas on the map so it could be more!

One of the mercenaries is Tempi, of the Adem. They’re silent, skilful fighters. Tam, a normal mercenary, calls Tempi’s mum a whore. When Kvothe explains what a whore is, Tempi thanks Tam for being kind. That was great.

There’s an incomplete sentence. ‘Camp is a misleading term, ‘encampment’ would be better.’ A conjunction, semi-colon or colon should replace the comma.

 

Whilst in the Eld, Kvothe follows the sex fae Felurian into the Fae, the world of the fae.

Fae was beautiful, stunning, and a complete contrast to the regular world. But my favourite thing was when Kvothe plays his flute naked and he notes that ‘my hand rested on the smooth wood of my lute.’ Mm-hm, I bet it did.

They had sex before they even said hello. Kvothe compares the experience to music and his body taunt like lute strings. Not bad for your first time. Then he stays in the Fae with regular sex. (You think I’ve written ‘sex’ too often in these sentences? Try reading sex constantly. Not what I signed up for but never mind.)

One sentence unnerves me. Kvothe said Felurian ‘kissed him with the wildness of a dozen children.’ No. Just no. You’ve just been shagging her. Don’t then compare her to children. Absolutely disgusting.

Kvothe sings Felurian a song that her love making sufficed and was nice. Felurian interrupting with ‘what?’ then ‘nice’ was hilarious. Kvothe wasn’t trapped in the Fae forever (like everyone else) because he had to finish the song.

 

 

Ademre

 

Tempi takes Kvothe to Ademre. He’s trained by Vashet to become a good swordfighter. (Compared to non-Adem’s he’s pretty great. Compared to the Adem, though, he’s a bit shabby.)           

Kvothe meets one-handed Nadu. When he dreams he has two hands. WEEP.

            Vashet says that something shouldn’t bother you unless it bruises you. This isn’t a viewed by the Adem in general but it’s an insight into Vashet’s character. For the Adem, the physical and the mental are one-in-the-same so ‘bruise’ doesn’t just mean a physical bruise. So Vashet, via her personal views, demonstrates he subtleties of Ademic concepts.

 

This was a really intriguing section of the book.

The author managed to create a different society really skilfully and it was believable. Including Adem beliefs that seem so clearly false that it shocks you to think people actually believe it: all cultures have these beliefs so this helped increase the believability of Adem culture. (Considering that all other cultures in the books seem mostly interchangeable, it was good to get this level of insight.)

They use sign language because speech is considered primitive and childlike. The same assessment is given to showing emotion, all but laughing and crying. (The difference lies in where the emotion comes from.) It turns out the silent Tempi is considered talkative by Adem standards.

 

The most interesting cultural difference (or at least to horny-teenager-Kvothe) is the Adem’s openness, and lack of shame, with nudity and sex. In its place, emotions and music are things that one should keep private.

They have sex with anyone they want (Kvothe and his teacher Vashet regularly go at it) and by ‘anyone’, ‘any number’ should be noted. It’s a hobby so why not share it with everyone?

Kvothe asks about sex, romance and love. Vashet gives a wise answer: ‘“There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart.”‘

During a training session, Kvothe gets an erection so Vashet tells him not to ignore it because it will throw him off balance. I can’t even deal with how funny this is.

The cultural belief that blew my mind was that the Adem don’t believe in fathers. No one’s associated sex with babies because everyone’s always having sex but not everyone’s always having babies. So they laugh at the idea of ‘man-mothers’. So that’s fine. But ‘anger’ is creation, used to do everything. Women takes a man’s anger (builds up because can’t use it) to make babies… and yet they have no concept of fatherhood? If you need men to make babies then how is that different from fatherhood? Like I said before, every culture has beliefs that are contradictory.

Without the idea of fathers, then there’s a risk of inbreeding. Not with brother’s nephews (because they’re clearly family) but fathers, uncles, paternal cousins… It’s a bit worrying. Considering the Adem are a hardy, healthy people, they’re not suffering from inbreeding depression but it’s a risk nonetheless. This could be why the Adem have no hair/eye colour variation but (1) Caucasians are the only race that have significant variation and (2) the Caucasian gene pool is smaller than other ethnicities, so this isn’t a viable link.

The Adem show willingness to have sex with foreigners so it’s bizarre that so few Adem do show any difference from the typical colouration. Most of Ademre’s money comes from guarding foreigners, and women are just as likely as men to be mercenaries, so there are plenty of opportunities to make half-foreign babies.

 

Critique: A Wise Man’s Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles) (Patrick Rothfuss) 1/3

Thank goodness, speech marks are used speech! (For context, the previous book used quotation marks (‘x’) instead.)

 

The prologue wasn’t as powerful as the first book’s. It dealt with the same concept of the three silences in a slightly different way but I felt like it echoed the first a bit too much to successfully distinguish it.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Some concepts gave me pause. In a brilliant, give-you-something-to-think-about away.

At the Inn in the present, Graham wonders if things are genuinely bad or they just seem bad compared with a happy youth. It’s good to see someone else understand the non-meaning of the ‘these days’ remarks.

Around the same time, Kote notes that you can’t risk asking someone something if everyone else knows it. That really shows you to be an outsider and thus garner more attention and suspicion.

The third one comes much later on. ‘Stories don’t need to be new to bring you joy.’ Rereading books or re-watching films or revisiting art galleries/museums… Having done them before doesn’t make it less valuable or a waste of time to do so again.

Kvothe implies his life’s a tragedy. The Chronicler and Bast agree that it’s not a tragedy if someone’s still alive. This makes Kvothe call them ‘so young’ (even though he’s younger than the Chronicler). I agree with Kvothe: not that his life’s a tragedy but that life can be a tragedy.

 

University

Ambrose (the bastard) has Denna’s ring so Kvothe steals it back.

Will writes a flirtatious note in his femininte handwriting so that Ambrose leaves his room. But Ambrose and Will work together as scribes so surely Ambrose would know?

Ambrose comes back early so Kvothe jumps out the window. The next day, people are speculating who the attempted burglar is. When Kvothe faints, the medic Mola diagnoses Kvothe with ‘”an acute case of jumping out the window last night.”’ Until this moment, Mola’s always been a serious, down-to-business character, so it made this humour all the more surprising.

Kvothe claims he was doing a friend a favour and Sim says it was getting his lady love’s ring back. Mola gets annoyed that Kvothe lied to her but honestly I don’t see where the lie is.

 

Kvothe’s university colleagues play a more prominent role in this book. They were important in book one but they’re a lot more involved with the critique.

Will makes mention that Sim is the son of a duke and Kvothe says he didn’t know. But the very first day Kvothe meets Sim, another noble teased Sim for being a noble of the Aturan Empire. Kvothe has a great memory so what happened? Kvothe should have just replied, “I remember” and then this wouldn’t be an issue.

The character Puppet reminds me of Master Elodin in his speech and behaviours. Perhaps they both went mad learning names and there’s a blue print to how a person behaves afterwards? Puppet had a very small role and, honestly, having him didn’t add much to the story for me. Maybe he has a bigger role in book three, in which case his brief appearance here would be justified.

            Ambrose gave Kvothe an alchemised drink to make him lose all his inhibitions except things that are important. It produces a few pages with a stream of complete hilarity. There was also a touching part where also tells Kvothe ‘I’m telling you three times’, just like Kvothe said to Bast in book one. It means Sim is still with Kvothe, even after so long apart.

 

Kvothe is put under trial by the church.

He’s cleared but he skips over it completely. Admittedly this book is big enough as it is but Kvothe’s been so forthcoming with everything else. It seems odd that he’d miss this out, considering how he clearly dislikes the church.

Master Elxa Dal recommends Kvothe takes a term off to save the University’s reputation. This is why Kvothe goes adventuring. (During this conversation, someone puts a strawberry on their cheese. Is this something people actually do?)

Elxa asks Kvothe how old he is and Kvothe says seventeen. Less than a year ago when Kvothe was first going under admissions, Kvothe said he was fifteen and he used his age as a reason to show why he should be admitted. It seems odd that Elxa forgot this and that Kvothe thought he could risk the lie.

 

Humour

The plot, the characters and the humour were all ramped up for this book.

Kvothe sees Denna with Kellen, someone who’s pretty, rich and talented, a combo ‘that was simply inexcusable.’ Hollar!

Kvothe said he was reading with one eye shut to not damage his whole brain.

Deoch, the co-owner of the Eolin bar, is bisexual. No one can think of the right word so Denna proposes ‘ambidextrous’ and it almost works.

Master Elodin is as brilliant in this book as the last. He casually take Kvothe on a rooftop walk to the Master Librarian’s window, after which Kvothe’s Archives ban is rescinded. The Master Librarian acted like Elodin talking to him on the rooftop was completely natural so you just wonder whatever Elodin has done.

The bit with Elodin that gets picked up the most is justifiably funny. Elodin makes everyone in his class share an interesting fact. When one student presents his (to me, very intriguing) fact, Elodin says, ‘”Wow. Your next task is to have sex. See me after class if you don’t know how.”’

Someone (Ambrose) is trying to kill Kvothe by using sympathy magic and stabbing a poppet. Kvothe makes a device to protect him and gets his friends to help him test it. When they’re making the doll, Sim says, ‘”Kvothe’s head is bigger than that.”’ He’s not wrong! When Sim stabs the doll, Kvothe shrieks and doubles over in pain. But he was just acting. That kept me giggling for some time.

 

Critique: The Singapore Grip (T.V. Series)

It’s easy to summarise this tv series in one word: brilliant. If two words were required, I’d be tempted to write ‘gripping’. 

People complained that the show was from a colonial perspective, even though the story was about white colonialists. People also complained that the Asian characters were underdeveloped, even though colonialists didn’t view Asians as anything more than a resource to exploit. A story’s perspective has to match the characters, however abhorrent it is: to do anything else wouldn’t be sensible.

*****SPOILERS*****

The main character Matthew Webb is a good soul. For someone who didn’t arrive in time before his father died, some distasteful words/actions would have been acceptable.

He respects all people despite their ethnicity and works for the UN with native peoples. He is constantly annoyed that the business, the government and the Europeans exploit the Asian natives for their own gain.

Walter Blackett’s hedonistic son Monty keeps on encouraging Matthew to go to prostitutes but he always refuses. He never says why but he sees it as taking advantage of the locals, most likely.

 

When Matthew first arrives on a military plane, the pilot warns Matthew of the Singapore grip and the soldiers laugh. I assume this means it’s a sex thing but then the pilot says it’s a fever… a sexy fever? So I’m confused and Matthew’s confused.

Each episode Matthew sees a few things that could be the Singapore grip: the uncertainty is always close at hand. Matthew audibly ponders it to many people, including Francois and Vera.

Francois doesn’t tell him what it is in Episode Two but in Episode Six it’s clear he knows. If he knew, why didn’t he tell him? Or did Francois only find out between Episodes Two and Six? Vera likewise doesn’t tell Matthew but in her defence she does show Matthew in the same episode.

 

Many viewers think Vera Chiang is manipulative. In all honesty I don’t see why. She is nice to Matthew and his father because they gave her a home and sanctuary.

In the second episode, Joan and Vera compete for Matthew’s attention, the former by taking off her bra and the latter by putting his hand to the skin of her breast. Vera just wants to move back into her home, a home she was forced to leave.

Vera takes Matthew to the dying house (he learns how Europeans exploit the natives) and then to her apartment (cramped and dirty compared to Matthew’s massive home for two). People thought she did this to make Matthew feel guilty. Seeing as Matthew’s job (which Vera knew about before meeting him) is about helping native peoples, making him aware of their trouble isn’t manipulative. Even if she didn’t know, wanting to help the exploited isn’t manipulative.

 

The Blacketts annoyed me to no end.

            Mr. Webb, Matthew’s father, has a heart attack at his birthday party, hosted at the Walter’s house with rival Langford in attendance. Naturally I think it’s sabotage. Did Langford do it to get rid of a rival, at Walter’s house to point the blame at him? Did Blackett do it to get full control of the business, with Langford in attendance to point the blame at him? (Why else would he invite someone who mutually despises him?) Nothing’s ever suggested but Walter is ambitious and scheming. Or maybe I just disliked him too much.

            The Blacketts bulldozed Matthew and Joan’s wedding. Even though he never said (or hinted) yes, the Blacketts are still surprised and angry when Matthew says no?

 

The Singapore Grip gave me plenty to laugh at. I was expecting it to be like any other period drama with a few funnies but we were served plenty more. Like every time Vera said, ‘”Kicked the bucket.”’

When Walter Blackett prepares a great display of rubbers, Monty tried to slip condoms in. That gave me a chuckle.

Vera showed Matthew a book of sex positions and his response is ‘Crikey’. That surprised a sizeable laugh out of me!

Vera says her Chinese people think all white people look the same. Considering white people say Asian people all look the same, this was a funny reverse.

Joan wouldn’t help Matt save Vera so Matt calls her ‘a complete bitch’. Then later in that episode, her American ex-dater called her a ‘selfish bitch’. That was satisfying.

 

When they’re captured by Japanese soldiers, Matthew is asked whether he believes all nations can live in peace and harmony. He says “Yes.” Considering our world right now is dividing itself with bricks of hatred and mortar of disgust, this is the message we need right now. Cut to six months later and they’re in a labour camp. We don’t see them get rescued (which is what I expected but was glad to not see) but Vera has sneaks some food and notes to Matthew. This shows that Vera genuinely cares.