If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. Does Rothfuss provide a good explanation for these three parts? Do they have anything to do with the story? Let’s find out whether this strong opener is more than a gimmick. “It was night” would be boring in the extreme, but simply adding “again” creates an impression of time passing. The first sentence is also pretty clever. This intriguing opening makes the reader wonder how silence could be made of three parts. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The Name of the Wind opens with a prologue titled “A Silence of Three Parts” – which seems a little on the nose considering the opening lines. Be warned: this article is long, even for a critique post. Also, to keep things interesting in a book with few wordcraft problems, we skip forward more and more as we go, covering the first seven chapters. While I usually record my first reactions to a book, this post covers material I’ve already read, though it’s mostly faded from memory. What will win: this award-winning, best-selling, critically acclaimed book, or my dislike of practically everything? Read on to see! You asked me to critique The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, so here we are.

Rothfuss name of the wind