r/KingkillerChronicle

sorry if this has been discussed at length already, did a little search and couldn’t find much on it.

TLDR at the bottom 🙏

BUT, when Kvothe finally gets to “setting the stage” for THE woman. Bam. First thing. we meet Devi. Demon Devi. She looks like him. She‘s better at everything than him. She’s smarter than him. And, at least at first it’s clear, that she’s hopeful she’s finally found an equal.

Then she realises that he’s a hopeless, naive idiot, who can be manipulated with ease, and on top of that, he’s got designs on EVERYONE KNOWING WHO HE IS AND WHAT HE’S CAPABLE OF!! Note - her preferred method is the slow, anonymous accumulation of power.

She sees that with all of that power, he’s as dangerous an entity as any there could be. She knows the power of stories in this world. She lets him build his legend, maybe she helps? Dhe could absolutely pull of magic shit with her hair out and the Kvothe legend will scoop that shit up in a second.

She gets into the underthing, hunting the archives BAM she’s the flame haired hero who finds the princess. Kvothe legend picks it up.

Finally, with Kvothe The Arcane, The Bloodless, with the Flame Red Hair and an alar of Ramston Steel at his peak. She murks the king and cracks the cobblestones in Imre (literally 5 mins from her house), right where Kvothe sent (potentially the same person) Ambrose flying years before.

If the one lie was the whole story. What if it was the trap that Devi left him in, waiting to die. The story is the trap. He willingly wrote it himself. And now he’s the bait in the Waystone Trap that was Devi’s long game all along. Because, for 3rd book reasons, Devi wants those fucking Chandrian dead more than anyone. Recognises that our protagonist is turning himself INTO one and helps him along the as she realizes she can use a new chandrian to take out the lot.

Thoughts?

TLDR - In the frame story Kvothe sets up meeting THE WOMAN, we dive back in and immediately go and meet Devi. Worth noting that we have already MET Denna when Kvothe sets up this grand entrance.Devi is the true “Denna” of the story, and the first two books are the same misdirection that caught Kvothe out and left him in his current bind which is Devi’s master plan that hoodwinked everyone, Kvothe most of all. If the one lie is the whole story, I think this fits everything.

Kind of like how Stephen King wrote The Green Mile.

Then he could write it out one story at a time and finally sate our expectations, while giving him space to write without the pressure of having one giant book.

I'm just spitballing here but if he reads this forum, and that thought crosses his mind...

I’ve tried to get 3 different women in my life to read this series but none of them made it past the first novel. And only one of the three actually finished the first one. Strangely enough all of them said basically the same thing. “It’s just not a woman’s kind of book” I’m curious to get the perspective of a woman who has read this series. Did you find anything about these books that would cause a female reader to feel that way??

I just hate when I know a character’s about to embarrass themself but there had to be a tradeoff for getting off easy from embarrassing Hemme how he did.

Kvothe is such a good depiction of young, capable men overflowing with intelligence but lacking even one ounce of sense. He could’ve waited a span or two to recover from the lashing but he has little capacity for patience because he’s used to finagling his way through things. Now he’s broke and Lorren might not let him back into the Archives! Goddammit dude you couldn’t have waited until after you got over the nahlrout withdrawal at least?

I think as well Pat does a subtle bit of characterization with the Ambrose interaction at the start of the chapter. Kvothe saw Ambrose being a creep to Fela but starts thinking of him positively once he (seemingly) does something for him personally. Don’t think that makes Kvothe a bad person, but it further proves Ben’s assessment of him as thoughtless. He’s selfish both by nature and because of his life in Tarbean. It’s difficult for a writer to portray that realistically but it’s done very well here.

• Both protagonists are in a frame story telling the story of their younger selves to two listeners.
• Both Ted and Kvothe are highly intelligent (Ted being a successful Architect, Kvothe being gifted Arcanist and just being Kvothe.)
• In both stories, the audience in the frame story AND the audience watching/ reading (us) are hoping the protagonists "snap" back into their old selves by the re-telling of the story. (Ted lost his big romantic gesture mid-20s personality and traded it in for maturity, kids, a wife after growing apart from his friends and all the events from the series.) (Kvothe lost his fighting ability, power, confidence, university, friends and his Name.)
• Denna is basically Robin (The on and off dynamic, the flighty, flaky, mysterious personality, Ted often opting to play the nice guy rather than get her back romantically.)
• Simmon and Willem = Marshall and Barney
• Lily = Fela (Friend, confidant, dating the best friend character.)
• Zoey = Devi (Transitioned from enemies to lovers and vice versa, In Devi's case, she at least wanted to sleep with Kvothe.)
• Mola = Stella (Both doctors)
• Hammond Druthers = Ambrose?
• Ted and Kvothe's intelligence and overconfidence is often what gets them into bad situations.

Idk. I thought of it last night and thought it was funny/ interesting. At the very least, the premise seems similar and the characters hold similar roles in the story. The overconfident idealistic somewhat naive protagonist, the loyal best friend, the on and off love interest, the frame story serving as a device to "unlock" the old protagonist.

You can probably come up with more nitpicky parallels but I'll leave it at that.

Hey everyone,

I was reading chapter 5 of C.S. Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost today and inadvertenly stumbled into a bizarre linguistic coincidence that completely blew my mind. I haven't seen anyone on this sub point out this exact theory for the origins of Kvothe's name.

We all know Rothfuss is a master of mythology and language. If you take two of the biggest names in the history of storytelling and smash them together, you literally spell Kvothe.

1. The "Kv" from Kvasir

In Norse myth, Kvasir is the literal incarnation of knowledge and omniscient wisdom. He is murdered, and his blood is mixed with honey to create the Mead of Poetry—the divine drink that gives anyone who tastes it absolute mastery over song, story, and speech.

• Kvothe is basically the living Mead of Poetry. He is an Edema Ruh, a master of naming, and his entire life is shaped by music, lore, and "knowing" the deep truths of the world. Even the Old Norse root for Kvasir's storytelling is kveða (to recite/sing).

2. The "othe" from Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the Shakespeare of the German language. He single-handedly popularized two massive literary tropes that define our favorite books: Coming of Age stories & Selling your soul for Knowledge stories!

• Coming of Age - "The Bildungsroman": He pioneered the modern coming-of-age story tracking a young artist's education (sound familiar?).
• Selling your Soul - "The Faustian Bargain": His masterpiece Faust is about a brilliant scholar obsessed with absolute knowledge who ruins his life by making a tragic deal with a devil.
• Kvothe’s entire arc is a Faustian pursuit. His pride and obsession with the hidden archives, magic, and the Chandrian drive him to dark choices, leading to his older, broken self at the Waystone Inn.

The Mashup: Kv(asir) + (G)oethe = Kvothe

In German, Goethe is pronounced roughly like GUR-tuh. The "oe" creates a vowel sound that doesn't really exist in English, but it sounds very close to a soft "uh" or "eh."

If you look at the phonetic building blocks:

• Kvasir gives you the sharp "Kv" sound.
• Goethe gives you the "the" (tuh) ending sound.

It sounds very distinctly Germanic, which is exactly why so many English readers naturally read Kvothe's name this way on their first pass before learning it rhymes with "quoth"!

Even if Pat truly just invented the name out of thin air during a teenage D&D campaign like he jokingly claims in interviews, the fact that his name perfectly splices the Norse god of poetry with the father of the tragic scholar archetype is a spectacular piece of literary synchronicity.

What do you guys think? Just a beautiful accident, or did Pat’s subconscious build the perfect name?

-ReddenRN

Took about 3.5 months. I wish I had more data but I don't. I probably read an average of fifteen minutes a night. Sometimes I got really into the story and would read for forty five minutes a night, sometimes I was very tired and would only get out a couple pages.

I think my page average was about 3.5 minutes a page.

I estimate that in the end I was pretty close to the audiobook length of around 30 hours.

I read the series once about 7 years ago. She has never read it.

At this rate, Wise Man's Fear should take about 5 months, and each of the novellas, which I have not read, maybe a month apiece.

Part of me superstitiously hopes that in doing this and taking so long, by the end of our journey, we will hear SOMETHING about the third book. I don't really believe it but it's nice to hope.

After this I plan on reading Wheel of Time to her. In its entirety that should take about 7.5 years.

I might make another post detailing my thoughts on my second readthrough, her first thoughts, what we agree and disagree on, and the overall experience of reading something this length out loud. I just wanted to share my accomplishment, I enjoyed the experience very much.

I have been gone from this page for years, I gave up waiting, then I gave up re-reads, and now maybe I am giving up hope for the doors of stone.

Much like I have accepted Martin will never give us the books beyond 6, I think Pat has given up on this.

Anyone has good news, an interview or an estimate to give me peace and excitement?

PS: maybe the story really is in layers, and all you need to do is read it 13 times to know exactly the whole story and no continuation is needed, but still, I’d like to see what happens at the Inn, and to read new pages about it one more time.

On my… 5th reread I think? Anyhoo, how old is Kvothe? There’s several times that Chronicler mentions coming to the university and it definitely sounds like it was AFTER Kvothe. For example, the first story Chronicler heard of Kvothe when chronicler came to the university was the story of Kvothe’s trial. That puts chronicler at the university at least after Kvothe. Chronicler has his guilder so he must have spent some significant time at the university. However, how is it possible that Kvothe was reading Chronicler’s book about the dracus? Also, how much time has Kvothe spent in the Fae? How long has he known bast and how much of that time was spent in the Fae getting to know bast/ bast’s family? Time works differently in the fae, so it’s possible that Kvothe is still on the younger side but time around him has marched on. I guess I’m just confused on the timeline of events.

Any thoughts?

I'm reading the Templars book by Dan Jones, and a bunch of info made me think of KKC's Amyr. Probably obvious to y'all, it's a group of religious armed forces that is surrounded by mystery and secrecy, who had enormous amounts of wealth and power at some point, rumoured to have continued in secret after they got disbanded and prosecuted.

Specifically, it mentions the location of the temple of origin where the first Templars started.

Originally, there used to be a temple there for thousands of years, on the east side of Jerusalem (built by king Salomo (son of David) as described in Bible book 1 Kings). Hidden in the midst of that temple was the most sacred: the hidden windowless room (the Holy of Holies) where God's name 'lived' and where the Ark of the Covenant stood. The Ark is usually described as a wooden storage chest decorated with gold, holding the original ten commandments written in stone.

These elements make a beautiful echo between real history and KKC: hidden windowless room at a significant location, housing (hiding, protecting) a large chest and a name, linked to the origins of the powerful group of religious knights.

(The original temple was reportedly destroyed in 586 BC. After a few hundred years of rebuilding, another destruction, another rebuild, the Templars origin can be linked to the temple at that Temple Hill location.)

I'm seeing other word choices in online sources, such as "presence" of God instead of "name", but I think Dan Jones is very particular in his word choices so I'm interested to investigage further.

I'm only at the start of the book, so I'm interested if there's more links to be found between the real world Templars and the KKC Amyr.

Is the story of the boy with a gold screw in his bellybutton one of the 9 and 90 tales? Im on my 5th or 6th re-read of wise mans fear and I had never noticed, but Tempi starts instructing Kvothe on the katan the day after he tells that story, while he just ignored him before. Did Tempi hear the story and think that Kvothe was connected to Ademre in some way shape or form.

Just that. I've read a miriad of posts about people being disheartened about it. Other people are still hyped, even after all these years. So, be honest: would you be first in line to buy it? First to read? Would you don't care at all and maybe even avoid reading it out of spite? Treat it just as any book you may have interest in, but nothing special?

Honestly, for me, even after all these years, even if it takes double or triple this span of time, I would get my hands on it asap.

He was delightful. He gave me a penance piece!

I sat near him at an event. He was thoughtful and wonderful with the people he was with. I wish the best for that amazing human.

I'm re-reading WMF again and suddenly several events have fallen into place. It all comes down to the reaction of Bast after Kvothe divulges his encounter with the Cthaeh. Forgive me if this spin on the theory has been posted before (several theories of Bast being the Sithe have been posited) but I'm yet to read one that lines up Bast's motives like this.

Several people have speculated that Bast is the member of the Sithe that Kvothe slipped past, or that has been sent to hunt him down (or both). So Bast hunts Kvothe out, but instead of killing him becomes enamoured by him, and becomes his student of sorts. That's a common working theory.

Now, this is where I got thinking. Bast reacted not only shocked, but utterly horrified when Kote revealed his account of the Cthaeh. What if this is the confession that sentences Bast to act on his mission, rather than 'feigning dutiful ignorance' as he has been all these years- deliberately avoiding finding out Kote's past. This might also go towards explaining why he's so aggressive towards Chronicler, the scribe who wants Kote to do exactly that.

What if Reshi doesn't mean Teacher or Father, but 'Target' or 'Marked for Death'? Or 'Promise', or, if Bast was to give him this title, 'Promise Broken'?

And what happens only hours after the Cthaeh confession, after Bast is forced to activate his repressed mission? Two thugs, hired by Bast, come to attack Kote. What if this is Bast's attempt (again, half-hearted, but attempt all the same) to fulfil his duty now he can no longer hide behind the facade of ignorance, the outward guise of 'not being yet certain it's the right man'. He arranges what outwardly appears to be a fatal attempt on Kote's life.

When Bast confronts the thugs afterwards, he is not happy about 'how far they went' (I think that't a quote or implied). ALthough ambiguous, it's implied he takes revenge on them for this.

I hope this was worth the post and hasn't been noted time and again!