Wise Man's Fear XI

[The Marquis de Leech]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't like pestering authors for updates but this one strikes me as weird given his confidence in 2007.

It does strike me as a bait and switch. As in, a key part of the marketing was "it's all written - no waiting needed!"

(This is the reason any books I write will be self-contained. That way, if I get hit by a bus or suffer godawful writer's block, the reader will still have a complete story).

[Argonath Diver]

Apologies for a non-specific Rothfuss rant and ramble:

It's a bit of a catch-22 with this genre, isn't it? We all delight in extraordinarily complex new worlds, and sales show that these big series sell enormously more than simple one-offs, even if they're damned delightful. As a spec-fic fan from my earliest years, of course I always want more, more, more out of these new fantastic worlds I'm exploring. So talented authors are pressured to write these decade-long projects with hundreds of thousands of words on print. Then, as all the best creative minds over the ages of humanity, they get bored or side-tracked. Uninspired or re-inspired elsewhere. Caught up in conventions in some cases, side projects others. Career-changing personal or familial issues.

And damnitall, the whole time we humble readers simply want to know what is going to happen to Kvothe, Locke, Arya, Fitz, Harry, Esmi, Dalinar, Ferro, Theoden (oops got that one, he died like a fucking boss), Karsa, and all these fantastic people we follow. 

Thankfully, there are so damn many fantastic series ongoing at the moment, that I can pick up one to re-start and re-read to occupy me for months at a time. PS to Dresden fans, I am about 50 pages from a reanimated Sue the T-Rex stomping through Chicago. Butcher should get me through the rest of the summer even at a book a week.

 

edit: Oh yeah, If Rothfuss could give out any insight on Doors of Stone, well, that'd just be damn terrific. Even if it's to say "It's 3 years away, sorry"

[all swedes are racist]

8 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

edit: Oh yeah, If Rothfuss could give out any insight on Doors of Stone, well, that'd just be damn terrific. Even if it's to say "It's 3 years away, sorry"

 one of those "glass half-full" people, eh?

[Argonath Diver]

Any cynicism in regard to Rothfuss' uneven explanations of his writing process and progress is not limited to myself alone. The guy has a big online footprint. GRRM has battled legions of pouting fans for fifteen years. He rather firmly said that his blog will no longer ever have writing updates - which I also disagree with, but at least understand. Rothfuss, as mentioned above, has spoken of his finished trilogy a long time ago, but as far as I can tell has not provided an update to his work with his main series in years. If I missed a "I ain't talkin about it anymore, guys" sort of quote, similar to Martin's, then I missed it. I don't expect him to be on the other side of the spectrum. Sanderson is apparently 61% done (huh?) with his Stormlight draft. That's a bit silly, but as a reader of multiple long and unfinished series, I like that approach even if it may be a bit tongue in cheek.

[Darth Richard II]

2 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Yeah that kind of bugged me too. Especially since Rothfuss has publicly talked shit about J.K Rowling on more than one occasion.

Whoaaaaaa has he? Do you have links to any of that?

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah for some reason beyond my understanding Rothfuss is able to get away with shit that would cause an absolute shit storm if said by other authors. A good example is where he talked about his female characters cup sizes in an AmA on Reddit. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

IIRC, Rothfuss uses Rowling's time-turners as his "go to" example of bad worldbuilding. The problem there is that at the time the time-turners were introduced, Harry Potter was still a whimsical children's series. Time-turners (or anything else about the setting) weren't supposed to be analysed in any great depth. Rowing's problem was that she later tried tacking a more mature framework onto this earlier whimsy.

[The Marquis de Leech]

11 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah for some reason beyond my understanding Rothfuss is able to get away with shit that would cause an absolute shit storm if said by other authors. A good example is where he talked about his female characters cup sizes in an AmA on Reddit. 

He got a lot of flack for comparing The Hobbit movies to seeing a childhood crush grow up to be a stripper.

[Draco the Lizard]

 

On 7/16/2016 at 8:44 AM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

He got a lot of flack for comparing The Hobbit movies to seeing a childhood crush grow up to be a stripper.

Why am I not surprised that the guy who gave us the Sex Fairy and the Matriarchal Casual Sex Having Ninjas said that.

[Jussi]

New interview

Quote

It’s funny you say that, because some of us thought Denna did not feel fully formed as a character—at least in the first half of the book.

The truth is, Denna has always been the hardest character to bring into this book. Part of that is because I started writing it in ’94 when I was, like, a 20-year-old straight white boy. To say that I didn’t understand women is a vast understatement—and also implies that I understand what it’s like to exist as a woman now, which is also not the case. The other part is that, narratively, she’s the one thing that Kvothe can’t opine on in an objective way. It’s so hard. I’ve made mistakes all over, but if I have a genuine failure in this book, it’s my lack of ability to do with Denna as much as I wish I could have.

How much is Kvothe playing up his own story? Mythologizing his own self?

It is very fair to wonder, How much of this is real? How much of this is true? Unfortunately, any answer that I gave to that would be destructive to the story.

Can you say anything on the subject?

However people read the book makes me happy, as long as they enjoy themselves. But I will say that one of the reads I find a little irritating is where they think, “Oh, he’s the best at everything. Oh, he’s telling this story where he’s so cool all the time.” Are you reading the same story that I wrote? Because, like, he is constantly shitting the bed. He is full of terrible decisions all the time. If I were gonna go back and mythologize my life, I would leave out so many of the terrible choices that I made.

Let’s move on to one of our favorite characters, Auri. Is it true she wasn’t in an early draft of the book?

It’s totally true. And a lot of people have used that fact to theorize that she can’t be vital to the plot. I appreciate the effort, but the book needs to be considered as an entity unto itself. The fact is, the book was a hot mess in that first draft. Science has no scale to measure the hotness of that mess.

For example?

Well, when Kvothe went to the University, he was originally buddies with Lorren. He was like, “I wanna go into the Archives,” and Lorren’s like, “Lemme show you around.” Kvothe liked it just fine, but what’s the problem? A certain thing that most authors like to include in a book—tension. Conflict. Drama. Like, the things that make a story a story. There was no Devi in the early books. There was so much that wasn’t in those initial drafts, simply because I had no idea what I was doing in terms of structuring a story. I put words together fine. I could write dialog and scene. I could even make an interesting chapter. But a book is so much more than a series of interesting chapters. And that’s what it took me a fucking decade to figure out.

We told ourselves we wouldn’t bug you about the third book, but perhaps it’s fair to ask if you feel pressure to put it out?

For book two, I felt pressure every single day, and it was unremitting. I’m from the Midwest, so I’m a people pleaser. We also have a lot of inbuilt guilt. So the fact that I wasn’t getting the book out in a year, like I promised—and I promised a lot in those early interviews—it was bad for me. Now I feel a lot better. I still regret not having it done, but I’m dealing with the Internet’s expectations in more healthy ways.

And the third book is definitively the end of this story?

Yup, book three is the end of this trilogy. But there will be more stories in this world, and some of those stories will have some of these characters you have come to know. But, yeah, I’m a firm believer in the fact that a real story needs a real ending, and book three has that real ending.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

I remain seriously sceptical that Rothfuss can finish this story in one more book.

[Proudfeet]

Eh, I'm sure he will. It is just likely to be an unsatisfying ending for most people.

[Calibandar]

A shame they did not push him for an update/release estimate on book 3, since that is the one thing everybody reading that article will be eager to read. Any indication. But nope. Nothing.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

He hasn't mentioned the KKC in months or years.  That he's mentioning it at all seems like a good sign to me.

[trickster]

10 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I remain seriously sceptical that Rothfuss can finish this story in one more book.

Fixed it

 

[Darth Richard II]

Meh, at this point I expect to see Melanie Rawn's third Exiles book before TDOS.

[williamjm]

14 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

He hasn't mentioned the KKC in months or years.  That he's mentioning it at all seems like a good sign to me.

I'm not sure if the statement that he's feeling less pressure than he did before to get the book finished is necessarily a good sign.

[Rorshach]

We could perhaps make a list of books that will arrive before TDoS. I think J.V. Jones' fifth Sword of Shadows book will come first.

[Darth Richard II]

Well, I was under the impression that JV Jones had pretty much given up writing, but I also kind feel TDOS will never come out, so...

[Gaston de Foix]

I'm not thrilled by Rothfuss dismissing questions about Book 3 as "the internet's expectations".  Doing a good job of managing fan's expectations (and communicating with them) is an author's responsibility. 

As for whether we have a full ending of the story in Book 3, no of course we won't. The plot and pace of the books make very clear that Book 3 will cover Kovthe's fall from grace in the past and slow rebirth in the present. The essential burdens of pursuing Denna and finding the chandrian will continue onwards. Although I suspect we will see her appearance in the present in Book 3. This book (like the Aspect Emperor Series) is just a mid way point in the story.