The title of this blog is a fantasy book and therefore it must be obvious that yours truly here is there to write a review of it. That is what I originally planned to do but I realized that the after-thoughts I had after reading this book were far more interesting. Those who have already read this piece of a gem by Mr. Rothfuss would probably ignore this review after looking at my rating of it: 4.5 / 5.0 (⭐). That is because that's the "average" rating of this novel on Goodreads. Now for those who still decided to read this review despite my "ordinary" ratings of the book, let me do the pleasure of telling you a story. The story of a beginning.
Most of the "stories" I've read, and I've read a good amount of them, had an ending. They always had an ending ( I do not mean to ignore you GOT fans but here I'm referring to the stories of authors who have actually "finished" their work ). It's true that now you don't see many "Lived Happily Ever After"s but you do see a conclusion. Though I must agree, a story without a conclusion is sort of meaningless, right? The moment you have been so eagerly waiting for: an ending that would blow your minds ( literally. ). So it's pretty obvious why most stories have an ending so that they can be "finished". But I see it differently. Each story is like a road. It takes you through adventures, drives you through those scenic views and leads you somewhere. Therefore whenever each story ends, it feels as if the author has put a dead-end on the road. I get it, a good story has a good ending to it. In my case, however, I always fail to put an end to what I've created. Does that mean I can't tell stories? Is a story without an ending, not a story? I'm going to let you decide on that right now. I'd love to hear your views on this topic in the comments.
The reason I wrote the above paragraph was that the philosophical me was just wondering about the common questions of a curious child: Is there ever an end to a story? This is a different view I'm presenting to you, Can a story ever end? I don't think I'm being clear here. Let me elaborate. Most high fantasy authors try to make a world of their own without even understanding what they are making. It comes straight out of their imagination. Nevertheless, it's their world. It's their creation. I'm a strong believer in procreative world-building. The reason why most authors are bad at endings is that it is the hardest thing to do. You can start with excitement, you can make your characters. It's like making a game, your game. But when it comes to end, you sort of need to let go of it. Not completely but still. In this huge world, you have created, you are trying to write a small character, a mere person's story. And you have a big task of ending it. So here I am asking you. Why would you even need an ending? Do you think there is one in the first place?
Each person is a story. The sad part is that you can never know the end of it. You can never. You can know the end of other stories, some pretty satisfying, some pretty gruesome. But you can never know the end of yours. This is why in my opinion, most people are bad with endings. To the high fantasy readers and authors, there's an entire world out there. And you are the protagonist of your story. So why not uncover its secrets of it before really moving to the end of it?
We read about science and social science in our schools. Some of us don't even realize that we are understanding the world by studying those subjects, even though, I must agree, the schools do a really bad job at making us realize the importance of them. This story we are living in had a beginning. And let me make that clear, every story has a beginning.
You must have heard the saying, "Everything that has a beginning has an ending." But hey, TLDR of the post, you can never know it.
Anyways, let's write something about the book now. I can get why it is one of the most-rated books on Goodreads. It's told from a first-person's perspective but the author does a wonderful job of switching back and forth between interludes of the third-person perspective of the main character. Therefore I urge you to go out there to read this book which inspired me to write this blog post. I'm not a fan of spoilers therefore I'm not going to tell you much. But I'm going to tell you ( spoiler alert..sort of ) that the author did an amazing job in not ending it. It doesn't end with a cliffhanger, nor does it have an ending. It just stops at a random place unexpectedly. I mean I was reading this at 01:00 AM in the night and I did not expect the end of the story to come any time soon. Well, that was the exact moment that I saw the beginning of the epilogue. I was startled at first and sort of disappointed. But that faded away a second after for I realized what the author intended to do there. This is the first book of the series, "The Kingkiller Chronicle" but the trilogy hasn't "ended" it, that is, the author hasn't written an ending of it yet. No wonder it's been ages since the second book of this trilogy. He is not able to end it. And all we fellas want is an ending. Robin Hobb stated the thoughts I had while reading this book perfectly,
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