Book review time

I've always had a secret desire to do pithy reviews of books I hate and dissect the reasons those books failed. Alas, Liarbyrd's Pithy Book Reviews (as I referred to it in my head) has never gotten off the ground. I would like, however, to write a quick word about a book I truly enjoyed.

As my semester is over, I have free time on my hands. And my laptop went into the shop (bad mother board) I had no video games to fill my time. I decided to read a book. Shocking. So I went to the bookstore.

Knee deep in the sci-fi section, I was really disappointed with the lack of science fiction and the staggering amount of stupid vampire books. I hate, hate, hate vampire books. Especially this series. Ick. And this, which is mainly just the main character having lots of sex with a menagerie of mythical beings. It's not far from porn, actually.

I don't want to read about vampires or witches or quests in magical lands. I just want a nice, solid space opera. It was slim pickings for the space opera, alas.

So I strayed into main stream literature and found the Book of Air and Shadows, which was about a lost Shakespeare manuscript. Awesome. Except the author was obviously a man. Does is matter? Well, the novel was populated with an alarming number of beautiful women who all did the nasty with the main character about 20 pages after being introduced. Way too much boinking going on and not enough lost Shakespeare manuscript!

Orphans of Chaos, a sci-fi find, was enjoyable. But it skeeved me out how nearly every male character tried to rape the 16 year old main character (the grounds keeper, the headmaster, a fellow student). Dude, seriously. Enough! It was weird. No sex actually took place but not for a lack of trying. Creepy.

Finally, I read The Name of the Wind. Not only was this book really good, no parts were creepy, the main character was not boinking everything because the author was living out a fantasy, and I couldn't wait to pick it up again to continue reading. It's a bit like Harry Potter (orphan at school), Oliver (orphan living on the streets) and just really, really well written and interesting. All the characters are compelling. Yes, it is technically a fantasy novel but the exotic setting and magic (called Sympathy, which is more a mystical understanding of Newtonian physics than actually magic) take a back seat to the story. I devoured the 720 page monster in days days.

Did I love it? Hmm...no, but close. I think the last book I truly loved was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and that lasted me through the end of the decade. (Future post will have to be "books I love". It's a short list.)

The thing that kept me from loving the novel is the first 50 pages are set up and delay the actually beginning of the story. It's a bit like the very first scene in Taming of the Shrew, with all the pretensions of making a story for the drunk to trick him. Yeah, the first 50 pages set-up the main character telling his life story to a chronicler. We don't need this and it almost stopped me from continuing to read. Kvothe can just start telling his story. No need for the story within a story format. It's just lazy writing, in my opinion.

I can't wait to read the second volume.