Made of Library

The English Patient is the story of four people brought together by war. Hana, the English Patient, Caravaggio and Kip all end up in the same crumbling Italian Villa. The story moved slowly, lazily. Not slow as in boring or lazy as in poorly written, but slow like a Sunday afternoon in the sun, like laying down on the couch for a nap, like watching proceedings through a haze of morphine. It was beautifully written and so evocative that I could see Hana wandering the fallen halls of the villa alone at night. I love the way the character’s stories intertwine. As we learn more about one of them we inevitably learn more about them all and what brought them all together. The move away and come together again in a kind of literary dance. I was only slightly disappointed by the ending. The ending that I wanted to happen would have put too sweet a tip on it, but that doesn’t stop me still wanting it. Like that last spoon of ice cream when you’re already full. The ending came too so...

Part two of the Kingkiller Chronicles continued Kvothe’s story. We see him move beyond the university and into the broader world, learn new skills and meet new people. I still enjoyed the second novel in the series, but it lacked something that the first had. This time round I found it irritating that Kvothe was so good at everything he turned his hand to. Be it composing songs, combat or love making, he was able to master the skill in an exceptionally short amount of time. It’s starts to rub after a while. No one can be that good at everything. There wasn’t as much advancement in Kvothe’s the elder’s story as I would have liked, but it still moved toward telling us more about the Chandrian, which is now the main plot line that is pulling me into this series. Overall I found myself getting irritated at Kvothe’s perfection, especially given that he’s only 16 years old during these events. It’s certainly asking us to believe a lot that someone so young can have such a mature ou...

It’s a been a long time since I've enjoyed a fantasy book this much. I’ve read a lot of fantasy and so much of it is just derivative and formulaic and brings nothing new. I usually have a number of different books on the go at once across different devices and different locations. One book on my for phone for reading on the bus, a physical book for at home on the couch, one on my Kindle for reading in bed. Once I’d started The Name of the Wind I had to stop everything else I was reading until I’d finished it because it was so engrossing. Considering the outline of the story there’s nothing to set this apart from any other stock standard fantasy story. But something Gestaltian happens with this book and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Kvothe is a young boy with an aptitude for music and survival. He’s intelligent and has the ability to talk his way out of just about any situation. The character is somewhat of a male ‘Mary Sue’. He’s good at everything...

It took me a long time to get into this book, and even then I wasn’t entirely convinced that I enjoyed it. The concept is intriguing and unique, but it took me a long time to work out what the concept even was. This novel creates a very strange universe and I would have appreciated some more time spent telling me about the world I was in before delving into the story. There was very little dialogue throughout the novel. It was heavy on descriptive passages, yet somehow managed to give me very little imagery of the physical places described in the book. One rule of writing that I’ve heard on a number of occasions is to avoid too many unnecessary adjectives. The Tyrant had no problem breaking this rule and I found myself having to reread passages to mentally cut out the extra adjectives and clauses to actually understand what was going on. To compound this the use of commas to separate adjectives or clauses within a sentence seemed optional. Sometimes they were there, but...