Second go, first since 2015. Notes below.

Second, first since 2015. I went back to it because the third one still isn't out and I wanted to know whether I had been defending something that deserved it.

Mixed answer.

What I had misremembered, the big one: I had Kvothe's time on the streets of Tarbean as a short bridge, maybe forty pages, between the troupe and the University. It's enormous. Something like a fifth of the book, and the best writing in it. The winter, the roofs, the boy going properly feral and losing his language. I had compressed all of that into "then he is poor for a while." My failure, not the book's, and it changed my view of the whole thing.

What has got worse: Kvothe at the University. First time round I took the constant competence as fun. This time I counted, a bad habit of mine. He is admitted early, wins the argument, wins the fight, invents the thing, gets the girl's attention, is the youngest ever, and every setback is either a bully or an administrator. There is a difference between a character being good at things and a novel being unable to let him fail, and what we have here is the second.

Denna is the other problem, and it isn't the one people usually name. It's not that she's mysterious. It's that the framing device means an older, sadder Kvothe is the one telling us about her, and he still cannot describe her as a person. Two goes and I couldn't tell you a single thing she wants.

The spreadsheet has this one flagged, incidentally, because it carries the only entry where I logged a reason for the reread rather than just a date. The reason column says "settle it." I have not settled it, and I doubt a third book would.

What has held completely: the frame. The inn, the empty room, the three-part silence. That is beautiful, and it is doing something the inner story isn't, which is telling you the whole enterprise failed before you have even started. I had remembered the frame as a wrapper. It's the reason to read it.

My 2015 note, on the flyleaf, undated but it can only be then, says: "best fantasy prose since Le Guin." Embarrassing, and I would like it stricken. It is very good fantasy prose. It is not that. It's mostly lists and weather, with about four sentences a chapter that are genuinely lovely. Fine ratio. Not the one I claimed.

Eight, same as last go, which surprised me. I had expected to come down. What I lost on Kvothe I got back on Tarbean and the frame.

I'm not rereading the second one. Once was enough and I remember plenty of it, enough to know that the boat and the Adem would take three weeks I would rather spend on something new.