D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

Are you kidding? Is this a joke?

I mean, let's be clear, you are not wrong re: Kvothe being basically the hero of his own fanfiction, and it's kind of arguably true even in the story, because most of what we're reading is a story that Kvothe is telling about himself, in a tavern he allegedly owns, to some poor schmuck who turned up there (and who is also being menaced by Kvothe's bitchy BFF, Bast). And absolutely he is embodying much of the Gary Stu/Mary Su vibes in that story.

And people don't rail at NotW that much, that's true. People mostly accept that Kvothe may be exaggerating somewhat and making himself more heroic or tragic than he was, and nothing he claims in that back is truly ridiculous either. Further Kvothe appears to be an unreliable narrator.

But the sequel? Nobody rails at the sequel? Man, were you around when that came out? Have you ever looked at discussion of Wise Man's Fear (WMF) at all? Because absolutely, from the bloody moment it got published, people do very much rail at Kvothe's portrayal of himself in the sequel, as a literal Ninja Sex-god. I mean, the first book, he's penurious magic-student and decent musician. In the second book, he's trained in ninja sword-fighting and ninja skills by a cult of Hot Polyamorous Ninjas, then spends like 1/5th of the book learning sexniques with some sort of Elven Sex Goddess (literal), and then I don't even remember much of the rest except he murders a bunch of people, including ones who can't defend themselves and it seems pretty dodgy.

An awful lot of people who like NotW absolutely loathed WMF, because either Kvothe is being an annoying exaggerator, or the story has gone downhill quite a bit.

Blood Song, as I understand it, doesn't have the same metafictional conceit. This isn't a story we're being told one character to another. There's no unreliable narrator. There's just a really ridiculously overpowered guy, and no, I'm sorry, based on the synopsis, Vaelin Al Sorna is not "10x less of a Gary Stu", he's actually considerably more of one.
I think Patrick Rothfuss gets by on a lot of his flaws due to how gorgeous and lyrical his writing is.

While I am hoping that there's a degree of unreliable narrator at work, particularly with some of the more absurd stuff in Wise Man's Fear, to date there has been no indication that that is the case.
 

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Indeed A Wizard's First Rule remains the first book I ever attempted to literally throw out a window (thankfully it failed, because I don't think it's safe for a book to fall 30+ feet potentially on to people).
Me and some friends encased one of our copies — might have been mine might have been someone else's —in concrete and dumped it in the sea.
 








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