Too Long, Did Read

The Name of the Wind came to me with glowing recommendations. It's the first part of a story about a young boy who grows up to be a great wizard. It is also too damn long. I mean, it reads like the author was paid by the word.

There are two things that can sustain my interest through a high word-count: quantity of content, and quality of writing. This has neither. It takes 650 pages to do what A Wizard of Earthsea did in 50, and the writing is of only passable quality.

Also, despite the length, the novel does not stand alone at all. There's no natural beginning, middle and end to it, it just starts and then continues only to just stop at an arbitrary point. Deeply unsatisfying.

The plot (what there is of it) is bog-standard, or rather a series of bog-standards all run together: loss-training-revenge, underdog-at-school, the-enigmatic-teacher, etc. etc. There's nothing wrong with some classic plotting, but the writing simply isn't good enough to make them feel more than predictable.

The world-building is... uneven. There's some oh-so-clever nursery rhymes that the author has devised for his setting, which are kind of fun, but feel like the author trying too hard. There's not a lot of development of the world's geography or history. At the same time, it feels like there might be a well-realized setting, if only the author would show it to us; but the focus remains squarely on the protagonist.

The protagonist narrates most of the story directly, and he was both clever and funny enough to carry me most of the way. He is also self-absorbed and egotistical, and it can be hard to tell if that's deliberate or just the author sliding into Mary Sue-ism. I think it isn't, but I don't think I should even have to ask.

It's not bad, but it's certainly not GREAT like I was told. There is genuinely a lot to like in the book. I just wish it didn't come with twice its own weight in padding. Is there just no market for non-doorstop fantasy books any more?