Let me quote from the back cover:

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity ad my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age that most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

Of these eight potentially exciting reasons to delve into the novel, precisely two actually happen in The Name of the Wind. For the rest, you'll have to wait for the sequel (to be titled The Wise Man's Fear, as Amazon informs us).

A great deal does actually happen in The Name of the Wind, but it's only the beginning of the tale of Kvothe, and the Canary was jumping up and down with eagerness for the rest of the story. We meet Kvothe (the "most notorious wizard the world has ever seen", according to the back cover) as an unassuming innkeeper in a tiny, insular village. By the time a man called Chronicler seeks him out, he has already shown us that he's something special, identifying a demon-ling that is almost impossible to kill for a lone man, and later killing several of them to keep them away from his village.

It is when Chronicler arrives that the story really begins, as told by Kvothe himself, and Rothfuss' talent really emerges. He uses all the standard tropes of high fantasy: Kvothe has a natural talent for the magic he is taught by a wise old man, he is orphaned by legendary demons about whom he develops an (unsurprising) thirst for knowledge, he lives on his own for years surviving only on his wits, he arrives penniless at the world-renowned University and rises meteorically through its ranks, and so on. But Rothfuss manages to give them a fresh twist -- the forms of magic in his world, for instance, are fascinatingly imagined. Another advantage of sticking to what might otherwise be boringly standard is that its very familiarity as a fantasy setting allows Rothfuss to keep world-building info-dumps short and sweet, focusing on what's important to his central character in building a basic framework. Kvothe himself is vividly colored in, and obviously a true fantasy hero at heart (and thus easy to root for) while not being a Mary Sue -- years as an almost-feral street urchin will leave moral cracks in any character.

Of course, the story's not perfect. Kvothe's gritty, hard-bitten adolescence is made a little unrealistic by his obvious advantages over other feral street youths -- most blatantly, that he can do magic. Even allowing for his grief and the direness of his straits, Kvothe manages to get by on his not inconsiderable wits -- how does the idea of using his magical, musical, or acting talents simply not enter his mind? Even harder to swallow is that one day, after hearing a particularly inspiring story, he snaps out of all of this and heads off to the University.

Little inconsistencies aside, The Name of the Wind really is an excellent novel. The Canary and I were devastated to hear, however, that the the second book won't be out until April 2009 -- we suggest you wait until then.