Another problem with long books

[bookzombie]

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.

Comments

[taldragon.livejournal.com]

it's not just you - i could barely make it through book 1 (and am not even _trying_ to read book 2) because i loathed Kvothe.

even for an early-teenager, he was just so smug and self-satisfied that i couldnt stand him - and i dont need a likeable main character to like a book!

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Oh good, glad it's not just me then! I enjoyed it enough to read the next one when it does come out - but he seems to be writing in GRRM time so I've got time to get over it!

[lcohen]

i saw this complaint about it on Goodreads, so it's definitely not just you.

i have yet to read any rothfuss--i tried to get name of the wind out of the library but so far, no luck.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The problem I had was that Rothfuss seems to expect that we-his-readers will never learn either: here is more of Kvothe's-problem-with-money, here is more of Kvothe's-problem-with-women... The most of Book 2 just felt like a carbon copy of the most of Book 1. Which disappointed me greatly, because I really enjoyed Book 1 and had been looking forward to more of something new, rather than more of the same.