Ratings: 4 Stars
There are books which are passionately written. This is one of them.
I have always been a sucker for (super)heroes, and the thing about passionate books is that – they really crank up the heroic scenes. I was jumping with joy in quite a few of them – you really, really root for the protagonist even though you find him unbelievable.
A thing about passionate books is also that they deal only in extremes – when the protagonist hits the hard times – there is a ceaseless, unrelenting agony that the hero must bear. And when this guy wins, his victory is absolute – he is this dare-devil, boy-genius, wizard par-excellence, whom girls swoon over, who also happens to be a penniless Cinderella. The loan-shark is in love with him, the terse doctor is in love with him, the hot librarian is in love with him, the girl who lives in the gutter is in love with him, and the gypsy-cum-singer-cum-model is also in love with him. There are like 10 girls mentioned in the book, 8 are in love with him, and the other two are his mother and a cart-puller.
Another thing about passionate books is that there is no apparent structure. The author seems to be a discovery-writer, he is wandering and leaping from scene-to-scene wherever his mind takes him. This makes the book unpredictable (which is fun, sometimes) but it also seems a bit unsatisfying and roughly-hewn around the edges. So, when the book ends, it does so abruptly, and it looks quite unnatural. And the transitions are senseless and jarring. This book had no climax or a Mount Everest-sized cliffhanger, they were just a series of hillocks whose purpose of existence is to show us how awesome the hero is.
I am not ranting, I really enjoyed reading the book about this virgin James Bond named Kvothe. This book is a guilty pleasure – the pages were literally flying. Yet I might not be interested in picking up the second part as I am not invested in his journey or really understand the stakes involved.
But boy, it was a fun book!
Alienman 