Wednesday, March 2, 2011

As I was saying....


All three pounds of the second volume of The Kingkiller Chronicles landed with a crash on my front doorstep last night, and I face again the problem of the big book fantasy series -- the four year (in this case) gap since my reading of volume one. And since (unlike most of these series --which I approach with hope followed by irritation, boredom, and depression) "Kingkiller" is one for the ages, I need to find a way to reenter the long-forgotten narrative.

Patrick Rothfuss has dealt with this by posting on his blog a brief summary in the form of a comic strip. Charming and probably enough, although as Rothfuss rather harshly puts it: "If you really can’t remember what happened in book one, you should probably re-read it. Most of what’s in there is pretty important to the story, y’know." Well, in some other life, maybe.

3 comments:

David Chute said...

As summerized the plot sounds a bit... Rather like those recaps of "Lost" using action figures.

Christian Lindke said...

He got a Kindle purchase out of me as I didn't feel like digging through boxes in storage for vol. 1.

David Chute said...

I've taken fantasy novels on vacation several times in recent years, with good results. This might be the one for '11. PR really does have a fine sense of narrative sweep. And I almost always enjoy stories about stories.

One thing you can do on the Kindle, of course, is search for first appearances in book 1 as you're reading book 2. No index in the old-fashioend analog paper edition, unless my memory is faulty.