I’ve finished the book. Patrick Rothfuss’ Wise Man’s Fear. It is without par.

Not perfect, but still above and beyond average.

As a sequel of a trilogy, however, I’m left wondering if the author is indeed the master class storyteller I suspect him of being or if– like his ravel protagonist– he’s just goddamn lucky.

I love Name of the Wind. The first of the Kingkiller Chronicles hit it right out the ballpark. That was a trope-riffic murder mystery wrapped in deconstructed fantasy and garnished with top notch prose.

It took 5 years for the second book to drop and drop it did, like an iron elephant. All 900+ pages of it. (I sometimes wake at night and stumble on the book on my way to the pisser. So that’s two ways this book has done me wrong.)

I can’t help but feel that the prose could have been tighter. It’s wonderful, no doubt, but at odd times you feel like the words are unsure of themselves. Like the 3 separate times some character mentioned “What does that have to do with the price of butter?” Mentioned 3 times in the span of 8 chapters and then never mentioned again. You can almost tell how the writer wrote in batches and where each batch ended.

But go deeper than that and you’ll find the bare bones of the story solid as anything. This guy knows how to plot, how to leave the clues, where to drive the mystery. At that, I am in awe.

1. Lackless

Seven things has Lady Lackless

Keeps them underneath her black dress

One a ring that’s not for wearing

One a sharp word, not for swearing

Right beside her husband’s candle

There’s a door without a handle

In a box, no lid or locks

Lackless keeps her husband’s rocks

There’s a secret she’s been keeping

She’s been dreaming and not sleeping

On a road that’s not for traveling

Lackless likes her riddle raveling



sings young Kvothe by his father’s wagon in the first book. His mother chastises him for singing rude songs and spreading gossip about some poor woman.

By this point, we learn only Kvothe’s father’s name: Arliden. He was Edema Ruh, an ethnicity of traveling performers. Like gypsies, say. And we know that his mother was once a noble woman who ran away to be with Arliden. Classic storybook romance.

By book two, we learn two important words.

The first is Lackless, the name of a family that was once highly-esteemed nobility but no longer is. To escape name’s stigma, the family branches took variations of Lockless or Lochees.

(…Yeah, hang on. The Chronicler introduced in the first book. Isn’t his name Devan Lochees?)

The second important word is Ravel which is a slur for traveling Edema Ruh. The word carried the prejudice against landless folk who performed for pennies and are widely-believed to be bandits and whores.

Further on, we learn of one Lady Meluan Lackless who hates the filthy ravel for taking her sister, Natalia Lackless.

… But that’s not right… Kvothe’s mom’s name is Laurian. His father even wrote a song for her.

Dark Laurian, Arliden’s wife,

Has a face like a blade of a knife

Has a voice like a prickledown burr

But can tally a sum like a moneylender.

My sweet Tally cannot cook.

But she keeps a tidy ledger-book

For all her faults I do confess

It’s worth my life

To make my wife

Not tally a lot less

Natalia Lackless. Well played, Patrick Rothfuss. You’ve hidden the answer right in the prose but you’ve kept the real trick a secret. It’s like a magic show and this guy just cut a woman in half but both arms and legs are still wriggling. But to see him put the woman back together– that’s what I’m waiting for.

Go read Kvothe’s Lady Lackless rhyme again and figure out why his mother told him off. That was Rothfuss pulling a 3-card Monte with a full deck in the span of two novels.

2. Lockless

Ah, here is the mystery. If Kvothe is the legendary storybook hero with the name of the wind on his lips and lightning on his lapels, if he spent a night with Felurian and escaped with his life and sanity, if he learned Tema in a day and offered silence and stillness to the Adem– why is he the broken inn keeper now? What happened to him? Tragic hero, what is your tragedy?

Plato’s Poetics proven particularly! The denouement heralded by the reversal of fortune, but what of this text? When the hero’s fortune is already reversed and we have yet to learn why?

I have a theory.

It was mentioned that Lady Meluan Lackless had a box that was, uh, lockless. An actual box without an actual lock. It can not be opened and there doesn’t seem to be any hinges. If it were not for the characters’ certainty that it was indeed a box and there is something inside it, I’d wager that it was just a cube.

But for all intents and purposes, a box. Without a lock. That cannot be opened.

“What would you say about someone who kept changing their name?” young Kvothe asked Master Namer Elodin once, in the University. He was, of course, speaking about his love interest, not at all the storybook heroine, Denna. Or Dinah. Or Denae. Lackless/ Lockless/ Lochees, it’s all the same to me.

“What?” Elodin spat, panicking. “What have you done?”

It was throw-away dialogue, really, but it preyed on the mind.

What if the legendary storybook hero Kvothe has hidden his real name in a box with no locks? A box that no one could open– unless of course you knew the name of wood. Like Taborlin the Great who knew the name of stone and commanded it to break. And it broke.

What if Kvothe the Arcane commanded the box to open and it opened. And he whispered his true name into it and closed it again. And now, without the power of his own name, he cannot open the box.

The longer he pretends to be a humble inn keeper, the more he becomes a humble inn keeper. The storybook hero is gone, hidden in a lockless box.

A brilliant, brilliant puzzle! It makes me fear what Patrick Rothfuss has in store next.