Chapter 6 Rewrite

CHAPTER SIX

The Price of Remembering

So, for those of you following along, Chapter 6: The Price of Remembering was an absolute bear to spork, because so much of it is just unnecessary.  More frustratingly, there's the skeleton of a very powerful scene hidden beneath all the bloat.  The challenge I set myself was to cut the chapter down to that skeleton to reveal the scene I think Rothfuss was trying to write: a scene in which two clever men play mind games with each other until one of them pushes the other too far, and they are forced to come to terms.  I cut over a thousand words from the chapter, but I did not change or reorder anything that remained.  All that you see below is Rothfuss' own words, just...fewer of them.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 6 (Part II)

Chapter 6: The Price of Remembering (Part II)

In which Galatea gives Rothfuss writing advice and empathises with his editor.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 6 (Part I)

Chapter 6: The Price of Remembering (Part I)

In which Galatea re-writes half a chapter and begs Rothfuss to get to the fucking point.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Notes

In which Galatea gets specific about surgical tools and wonders why we're still nowhere near the start of the actual story.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Halfway to Newarre

In which Galatea complains about contrivance and accuses Rothfuss of insufficient origami.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Wood and Word

In which Galatea questions Kvothe's sanity and pays Rothfuss a rare compliment.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 2

Chapter 2: A Beautiful Day

In which Galatea reminisces about English autumns and finds surprisingly few reasons to yell at Rothfuss.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 1 (Part II)

Chapter One: A Place for Demons (Part II)

In which Galatea suspects sexism and gets cranky over conlangs.

The Name of the Wind: Chapter 1 (Part I)

Chapter One: A Place for Demons (Part I)

In which Galatea has many questions and threatens to throw spiders.

The Name of the Wind: Prologue

Prologue: A Silence of Three Parts

In which Galatea spends over a thousand words berating Rothfuss for word-padding, and - as a ginger - calls another ginger "ginger".

The Name of the Wind: Blurb, Dedication and Introduction

The Name of the Wind: Blurb, Dedication and Introduction

In which Galatea laughs at hyperbole and questions the author's credentials.

Welcome to the Spork

Where do I even begin?
There are plenty of bad books in the world.  There are plenty of bad books drowning in unwarranted praise.  There are plenty of books that aren't bad, but that just aren't the right books for me.  None of these usually bother me for longer than it takes me to read a chapter or two.

Then there's The Kingkiller Chronicle.

I started reading The Name of the Wind with perfectly fine intentions*.  Someone recommended it to me, I read a few chapters, I thought it was mediocre and I stopped.  But, unlike most mediocre books I start and decide not to continue, The Name of the Wind would not leave me alone.  Praise for it showed up everywhere.  Pat Rothfuss was a guest at conventions I went to.  News of options for film and TV was all over the entertainment sites I read.  A couple of my friends got involved with a Worldbuilders fundraising event.  And people I know - people I respect - kept asking me if I'd read it, and reacting with horror when I said I couldn't get past the first ten chapters.

Eventually, something had to give, and clearly that something wasn't going to be the book.  So I gritted my teeth, knuckled down, and read The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear, and The Slow Regard of Silent Things in quick succession.  Honestly, they weren't as bad as I remembered.

They were worse.

Have you ever read a book or watched a movie that felt like it was designed to annoy you personally?  The more I read, the less I could shake the feeling that I was the butt of some elaborate joke Rothfuss had concocted at my specific expense.  Time after time Rothfuss introduced some key element to the story - music, street performing, conlang - that touched on some specific experience or passion of mine, and then he'd go and cock it up in a way that set my eyelids twitching.

I'm a big fan of sporks and review blogs, and I'm not one to shy away from a challenge (read: I have no idea when to back away from a bad idea), and The Kingkiller Chronicle felt like a personal challenge.  So I'm sporking it.  Chapter by chapter, line by line if I have to.

Along the way, I'll be taking a cue from Das Sporking, the best community of sporkers on the internet, and tallying up the faults that - to my mind - best demonstrate why this series deserves a spork at all.

So here goes.  I, Galatea, being of sound mind and body, do hereby resolve to thoroughly spork The Kingkiller Chronicle, and not to cease until either I or the series has triumphed.

God help us all.

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*Actually, I first read it because a girl my then-boyfriend dumped me for said it was her favourite book and I wanted to see what made her so special.  So my intentions weren't entirely fine.