I have had a longstanding rule that I won’t read a trilogy or series of books until they are all complete.  While that can limit my options, I hate waiting for the next installment.  A perfect example to this is George RR Martin’s series – A Song of Fire and Ice.  Ignoring my own advice, I embarked on George’s series about three years ago and have yet to have any solid evidence of the next installment coming any time soon.  Even the new HBO series based on the books doesn’t seem to do much to motivate.

Since then, I’ve been very diligent to stick with my rule.  Frequent business travel (ie a LOT of reading), however, has caused me to weaken and soften my stance.  To wit:

I recently stumbled on to a website dedicated to fantasy, manga, comics etc.  Recently postings pitted protagonists from various books against another in hypothetical (haha –  fictional characters in hypothetical situations) cage matches.  One that caught my attention was a matchup between Drizz’t (don’t ask if you don’t know) from various Forgotten Realms novels and some punk named Kvothe.  Being familiar with Drizz’t and not knowing anything about Kvothe (even the pronunciation of his name eluded me), I couldn’t imagine that anyone could whomp on this untouchable badass.  My curiosity led me to the book above, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

It took me a couple weeks to finish the novel, mostly due to work schedules and not from a lack of trying on my part.  This book is probably the best novel I’ve read in years.  It is a refreshing piece of fantasy literature that will appeal to any fan of the genre.  The problem?  To date only book 1 has been published and book 2 will not be out until March 2011.  I almost think losing a child would be easier than waiting to know what happens next.

Give it a shot…a book well worth your time.

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