 All right, I just want to make one thing clear from the very beginning. Overrated and bad are two different words. Okay, they have two different definitions. They're not synonyms They don't mean the same thing not even close. Overrated means overrated and bad means bad. That out of the way the name of the wind is extremely overrated. This is the introduction song It's not very good, but it's not too long So I've been hearing about this book for several years now and I mean Honestly, I don't get what the hype is all about Like usually with books that I'm not super into I can at least see the appeal of it like like the powder mage trilogy I didn't particularly like the first book in that But I get why other people like it this one. I'm just I'm kind of at a loss So with this review I'm gonna do a non-spoiler section and then a spoiler section partially because people have been asking me to do that for a little while and Partially because I feel that this book kind of needs it in order to properly talk about it So I'll start with the non-spoiler section now this book is about this guy named Kovoth and at the beginning of the book He is hiding out. He's just an innkeeper in a small town and apparently he was some sort of legendary hero before this but something happened, we don't know what even by the end of the book and so he just decided to fake his death and move away and Then this guy called the chronicler comes along and he runs into Kovoth and he's like hey You're Kovoth. He recognizes him and he wants his story. He wants to get his story and eventually Kovoth agrees to it And so the majority of the rest of the book is just Kovoth telling the story of his life To the chronicler and telling the story of how he became such a legendary hero and Kovoth's childhood the main story starts off with he is just a kid in a traveling theater troupe And apparently he's some sort of like genius and he actually learns the basics of magic and you know yada yada yada It's actually kind of tedious for a little while, but then these weird Demon things come along and kill his entire troupe But he manages to escape and that the demons are called Chandrian and so most of the rest of his childhood arc is about him Just trying to find information on the Chandrian so that he can find them and kill them for revenge So the plot of this book is simultaneously the best part and the worst part because it oscillates between being really really interesting and Also the framing of it is really great. The only issue I have with the framing is that it kind of robs certain scenes of tension because you know We know Kovoth is gonna survive. So these parts where it's like, oh, is he gonna die? We already know it's not gonna happen But beyond that I think that actually seeing this sort of story through the eyes of the main hero is really neat And it's not something we see in the fantasy genre very often at least not something I've seen But also at the same time the plot just jumps between being Really kind of interesting and kind of cool like every time Kovoth is searching for information on the Chandrian It's really neat, but there's also just so much shit that we don't need. It's so tedious There's a lot of nothing going on and I'll get a little bit more in-depth on that in the spoiler section But I mean there's just so many parts of this book where I'm thinking I don't care Okay, when Kovoth is at university that there's so much that just doesn't matter there Okay, he's not really forming particularly interesting relationships with his friends He has a very brief romance, which I'll talk about you know a little bit But that's I mean that's okay, but that's not very interesting. He has a rivalry with another student and one of the professors But a lot of it is just there's nothing happening. Hell it takes a hundred and thirty pages to get to the point Where the Chandrian kill his theater troupe. I mean There's so much nothing in this book and it's a long-ass book So having all of that in there is a huge huge detriment another thing in this book that is Simultaneously pretty good and also really really terrible is Kovoth himself because Kovoth is Well, okay at the beginning it really seems like Kovoth is just a huge Gigantic insufferable Mary Sue. I mean they spend several conversations talking about what a genius he is how smart he is And even as he gets older, he always knows what to do. He almost never screws up anything He just it is really really insufferable But at the same time he does have actual personality and he does have some actual flaws So it's not the end of the it's not the biggest deal in the world And you also remember that it's possible that Kovoth is an unreliable narrator in this story It's possible. He's talking himself up. He's trying to make himself look better and I will get more into that in the spoiler section as well but suffice to say Later on in the book his character didn't bother me nearly as much as it did at the beginning because at the beginning It really really is insufferable to just not only hear him talk himself up and talk about how yeah I did this thing and it was really cool and I did this other thing and it was really cool And I learned magic in like two days, but also to hear other characters Talk about him as though. He's just the most impressive genius ever. It's just God dude stop please and then there's his romantic relationship with this girl named Denna and that one It also starts off kind of cringy and stupid, but as time goes on They do have they do develop actual chemistry and you can tell that okay Yeah, these two are friends and you can see why they might like each other But the thing is it's not exactly a healthy relationship at least not in this book It certainly doesn't seem that way. It seems more like He's just kind of obsessive over her and she's very deep dismissive of him But it could have been a hell of a lot worse So that wound up not bothering me too much and again you got to remember this is cavo telling the story Years later, so he's gonna talk about denna as though she is the most beautiful most amazing woman ever And since I'm me I can't have this sort of review without talking about the world building a little bit I think it is Generally pretty solid. I mean, it's not like super expansive or super deep in any particular area But it does have two separate magic systems one of which is actually really hard magic Which is very well explained and very neat and very unique and I really liked it the second one is more of a soft system and that's the one about Finding out the names of objects like the true names of them and then when you know that you can control them and Like the name of the wind is supposedly a really big deal in this world's Mythology and in their magic system because once you know the name of the wind you can use it to fly and shit So that is where you know, that's where the title comes from and so both of those are really really cool And the book also goes into a whole lot of detail about The coin system believe it or not That's and that's I liked that just because it's not something that often gets a lot of detail in these sorts of books It's just like here. Here's gold like gold coins. That's it But in this one you have like a very detailed very complex hierarchy of like what different coins are worth and how they Merge into one another things like that. It's I liked it. It was really cool And of course I can't talk about this book without mentioning that the pros is just absolutely phenomenal I mean this that's not something I care about very often Except when it's either particularly good or particularly bad in this case It is really really amazing because almost every line in here. It really draws you into the scene It really gives you an idea of what things look like it gives you an idea of what people are feeling of what's going on It's I mean, it's almost perfect. You really just have to read it to see what I mean for yourself but I heard that this was Patrick Rothfuss's first book and He really just wrote it and rewrote it a whole bunch of different times So it does feel like he has polished it to a sheen at least in that regard because I've already mentioned my issues with the plot and everything But the actual way it's written does feel polished and perfected in just the best way possible. So In that regard this book is just absolutely amazing So I guess if someone is just reading it for that reason then sure I guess I could see why they love it so much. So I think that's about it for the spoiler section Would I recommend this book? I Man that I really don't know I sat here for like two minutes trying to think like what I recommend this book And who would I recommend it to? I guess if you're someone that just really likes Like poetic great pros, then I guess this will be for you if you're someone that doesn't care about that then well that probably won't make a difference obviously and I guess if you want to hear sort of a Heroic fantasy story that's told from the perspective of that hero and like if that appeals to you then you'll probably Probably enjoy this a lot But if you're not someone that's into that then I don't know if there's much here for you because again the plot It goes on for a very long time and there's not much tension in it And there's not a whole lot of stuff to actually care about and I mean the main character is actually okay But he doesn't have that much development. He doesn't have any real neat relationships There aren't really any other characters that play huge roles that are particularly interesting I mean there's not a whole lot here for you So I don't know if I can really recommend this to Fans of fantasy or just fans of epic fantasy or regular heroic fantasy Unless you're looking for something very specific now on to the spoilers section So if you haven't read the book you should probably leave now Okay, so first and foremost Kavoth is Definitely definitely definitely an unreliable narrator. Okay. That was one of the only things I heard about this book Before I started reading it was people arguing about oh, is he an unreliable narrator or not and Guys the book just straight up tells you okay at one point when he's in Tarbin He goes to a storyteller and he asked the storyteller Hey, was that story all true was that was it a lie and the storyteller just straight up tells him Well, sometimes you need to lie a little bit in order to make a good story And so I'm just thinking wow all of those forum fights all those people arguing with each other the book Just fucking said it guys. It's not exactly subtle Okay, that was just Patrick Rothfuss talking directly to the audience and so once I accepted that That really did make Kavoth's character a lot less insufferable because you know, okay He's talking himself up and so I can imagine a little bit Okay, so this probably didn't go quite as well for him People probably weren't quite as enthralled with him and he's intelligent. See he was just you know He was probably a smart guy don't get me wrong But there's no way he was the unparalleled genius that he portrays himself as and now I want to get into Specific parts of the plot and why exactly they are so pointless So after his theater troupe is killed and he runs off and he lives as a street urchin in Tarbin for like three fucking years I Mean what was even the point of that sequence because that goes on for quite a while Okay That's a substantial chunk of the book that is taken up there and I get that it was a substantial chunk of his life And it's important to him, but basically nothing happens that entire time that actually matters to the plot Okay, just near the end of that sequence. He realizes. Oh, hey Chandrian. Well, I should probably go after them I think I'm gonna go to the to the university so that I can do research on them and Like what is the point of any of that? Like he doesn't really learn anything particularly important on the streets as far as I remember If he doesn't use any of the skills he learned there in order to help him out later in the story Like all the skills he uses like riding a horse and everything those were all learned back when he was a kid in the theater troupe So I really for the life of me cannot figure out why that decided to go on for so long And I know Kavoth at certain points mentions that like oh, I'm giving context to this Well, we don't need that much context We really really don't and then there's the university and the university 90% of the stuff that happens there is just Kavoth trying to show off how smart he is or how talented he is and I mean, I get that some of it is also explaining how magic works and everything but Good God, it goes on longer than his life as a street rat in Tarbin and Almost nothing important or interesting happens at all like think about there's just him showing off to his professors Him impressing some of his students there's him getting kicked out of the archives and he spends pretty much the entire rest of the book wanting to go back in so that He can research the Chandrian like You could probably describe that in like a paragraph. Okay, you really could it was hey I got kicked out of the archives for doing this and then eventually I was able to find a way to sneak in and Then I found what I needed like we really did not need several hundred pages of shit in between that those two events We really did not and I guess that some people like the university because to them it might feel like a more Adult version of Harry Potter or something But the thing about Harry Potter is that the university was the focus of the story in that one Okay, Hogwarts was this magical land far away from our Muggle world Where the main characters went to like have adventures and make friends and shit the university seems Kind of boring and in a lot of ways it seems miserable at least to devote because you know, there's constant politics and battles between various factions at the school and not like actual physical battles just people being Dicks to each other mostly and so it doesn't feel like an adult Harry Potter It feels like an actual University filled with a bunch of obnoxious assholes and so all the stuff with the university is just Just why what why is that even there and then there's some of covots relationships with women other than Denna Like the moneylender who is very clearly flirting with him and he doesn't quite figure it out or the other student fella Who's very clearly flirting with him and he doesn't realize it until later like a lot of that just feels like Cove oath the older one again trying to show off only in this case. It's a little more cringy Or it's just him trying to show that like okay you know all these bitches were Crawling all over me, but you know, I love denna so much that I wasn't gonna do that and Again, I guess if that's what they're going for that could work But I just it was pretty cringy for a lot of the points that or a lot of it was cringy Okay, I'm just leaving it at that and then there's the climax of the book So what happens there is that covote hears about the chandry and attacking another town and killing a whole bunch of people there And so he immediately runs off like he goes really really far away from the university for several days In order to investigate and while he's there All he really finds out is that the chandrian are killing people in order to Prevent information about themselves from me from spreading. Okay. He doesn't actually see them again while he's there He just finds that little bit of information out. So he knows why they killed his parents sort of and I mean again that's really the only bit of information we get throughout this entire book about the chandry and like we We don't know anything else about them and kivoth gets no closer to finding out where they are or how to defeat them and So I just felt like this book was kind of a waste of my time in that regard But even setting that aside while kivoth is there. He finds this creature called a Drakis, which is basically just a dragon, you know, it's this big lizard thing which breeds fire each trees You know that that sort of thing and the Drakis is going nuts It's about to kill a bunch of people so kivoth has to figure out how to kill it and I mean I guess when viewed in a vacuum this sequence is actually pretty good it shows off that kivoth is you know genuinely intelligent he does know how to work with people and He's a decent person. You know, he goes out of his way to try and stop this thing and So okay. Yeah, that does make kivoth look better, but Really It's what what purpose does it play in the overall story? Like does it make kivoth More famous. Is that the beginning of him as a hero? I guess so but I Again, we could have gotten it in so much less time than we wound up getting it and so If you take nothing else from this review just take that this book is padded, okay It's my copy is over 700 pages long and most of them were unnecessary Most of them were kind of boring most of them were tedious and so at the end of the day I Just I didn't like the name of the winds that much. I don't think it's terrible. I think it's decent But that's really all I can say about it. So if you are someone that really likes this book Could you please explain to me why you like it? Could you explain to me what you see in it? What's great about it? And also if you have spoilers, please mark them in the comments, but for real I am I am curious to see what you guys think about this But now that's all I have to say. So if you could please rate this video comment subscribe Go to my patreon page. Give me just give me money, please and Well, I think that's all the stuff that we're supposed to say at the end of our videos So, you know, just just do all that and we'll be square