"'Ye Gods,' Elodin sighed, disgusted. 'A bootlicker too. You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.'"

Many people, including Michael (my infallible source of amazing epic choices of books) have been telling me that this is a very good book. Circumstances conspired to make me wait, and with the hype dampened, I felt it an appropriate time to pick this up. I'm glad I decided eventually to read it, because it's turned out to be everything everyone promised.

"'If a girl as fair as that looked at me with one eye the way she looked at you with two . . . We'd have a room by now, to say it carefully.'"

I started the book and was a little surprised not to be fully engrossed. The Scrale caught my interest, and there was evidently more to our illustrious many-named innkeeper than met the eye, but other than that, things seemed slow and fairly pedestrian. It was at the start of chapter 8, of course - the real start of Kvothe's story - that I really began to get into this book.

"Her expression brightened, as if someone had lit a candle inside her and she was glowing from its light."

I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot I didn't like about this book. Some of the chapters were insanely short - hardly worth the pagebreaks, I thought once. The jerks between telling the story at the Waystone and being swept up in the narrative were often jarring, and though this is perhaps intentional, it unsettled me so much that I would use them as places to put down the book and go and make a cup of tea. Thirdly, there's lots of things you can't, or won't, or don't understand, according to Rothfuss. The size of a large city which you "cannot understand if you haven't seen it", that you don't "really understand the ocean", you can't "really understand how embarrassing it is " to be poor. You "may understand how my mind felt", you "won't understand why this was so easy" - the list goes on. It goes on so much that, I found myself stopping and thinking 'Well aren't you telling the damn story? It's your job to make us understand, isnt it?'

"I wish I were as brave and young as you."

Still, for all that, something compelled me to read on. The story itself isn't overtly impressive, though Kvothe is a raconteur of the highest order and very easy to like. I've seen this book compared with works of [a:J. K. Rowling|4918045|Rowling J K|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] and [a:Robin Hobb|25307|Robin Hobb|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205023525p2/25307.jpg], both of whom I've read and greatly enjoyed. There are many elements of the Bildungsroman in Kvothe's story, too, which increases its accessibility.

"I slung the travelsack over my shoulder and cinched it tight across my back. Then I thumbed on my sympathy lamp, picked up the hatchet, and began to run.
I had a dragon to kill."

I said not overtly impressive, and the t therein was placed intentionally. I think the appeal of this epic, for me, is in the subliminal. I say this because though the story is OK and the characters are INTERESTING and the magic is CURIOUS and the history PROVOKING, by themselves they're just parts of a story. The thing that ties them all up together is the language. And, of course, lacking Rothfuss' skill, I can't impart much more than that. There's... a poetry. a meter to things. A cadence, if you will - the words, the very sentences at times seem to flow like water, and when you read the next, you sort of feel that it was inevitable that it be what it was because nothing else makes sense, because nothing else would simply fall into place. Imagery, I suppose you can call it. Sir Savien, The Depiction of Kvothe's opus at the Eolian is one such place that sticks in my mind, as I flip back through the book. I read it in a noisy environment without the time and dedication a good book deserves and yet I came away moved. Similarly, the few pages with the horse Keth-Selhan jumped at me as holding a great milieu.

So I suppose it's fair to say that despite my reservations, I still had places where I couldn't put this book down. It was truly excellent, in places, and I'll be looking forward to the next one - though not straight away. Some time to digest is certainly on the cards.