Another problem with long books

So I've just finished The Wise Man's Fear, the second Patrick Rothfuss novel. It's fairly enjoyable - I like the world building and it's told in a breezy, approachable style that's reminiscent of David Edding's Belgariad, which I adored when I was a teenager. However, it's also just shy of 1000 pages long.

Now in the past - in other venues - I have sometimes ranted about books being too long for their story, but in this book I spotted a new problem for me.

See, if the book had been split into say a more reasonable two 500 page books instead and published six months or a year apart I would have had a chance to forget that the hero is a self-obsessed smartass. Look, I have no problem with smart or flawed-but-interesting characters. My issue with Kvothe is that every time he is in a new situation he outthinks everyone around him in a way that means he inevitably gets into trouble or looks foolish, but he gets out of it because he's so gosh-darn-it clever and charismatic. The capper is that he never learns. Despite getting it all wrong so often he still enters every situation thinking that he knows best and in the long-term never really suffers for his mistakes. Oh, and for much of the two books so far he is 15 to 16 years of age.

In small doses I can live with this, but after nearly-1000 pages I just want someone to push him off a cliff. I keep finding myself thinking of John Scalzi's idea that the failure mode of 'clever' is 'asshole'.

I dunno, maybe as someone who has always been above average but not brilliant at things, I struggle with ultracompetent heroes. But, rather like John Meaney, I strongly suspect that Rothfuss read Roger Zelazny at an impressionable age...

But maybe it's just me.