Roughly 13.5 billion years ago, the Universe took on its current form in a rapid expansion known as the Big Bang.
Nothing much else of note happened until 2007, when American author Patrick Rothfuss published The Name of The Wind, the first installment in a planned trilogy called The Kingkiller Chronicle. That book and its 2011 sequel would go on to be an unexpected smash hit, propelling its author to fantasy stardom and eventually leading to a planned 2018 TV series, to be helmed by Lin Manuel Miranda. As of the writing of this blog post, the world appears to teeter on the brink of full-blown Kvothemania, having barely survived previous onslaughts of Hulkamania and Pottermania.
But lets go back to 2007 for a minute. Unknown to all, on the other side of the planet, another historical titan was preparing to step onto the stage: Ronan Wills, unassuming secondary school graduate and soon to be biology student. In 2013, Ronan wrote a series of snarky and somewhat mean-spirited blog posts picking apart the first two entries in the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy for a now-defunct blog. They attracted a mild following and sparked a several year stint of sporadic blogging in a similar style, until Ronan finally got a job and no longer had time for that sort of nonsense.
Then, in late 2016, an unprecedented tragedy occurred. No, not that one. Struck down by a car accident, Ronan (who will cease writing in the third person like this very soon) was suddenly handed a whole lot of free time again. Lacking the energy or health to use it for anything worthwhile, an idea bloomed: what if Ronan were to re-examine the Kingkiller Chronicle again, on the eve of its cultural domination, in a somewhat more scholarly and less slapdash manner? And without literally going through the damn thing line by line because really, that was frequently more work than it was actually worth?
So yeah, we're doing this again.
Why? Well, like I said, our pal Kvothe does seem to be on the rise in a way that I never would have expected back in those halcyon days of 2013 (especially with the third book still seemingly no closer to publication than it was back then). If ever there was a time for blog-length Hot Takes, this is it. And I wasn't kidding about not having anything better to do.
Even if you read all of my previous Let's Read posts and bought the Lego playset and commemorative mug, do still stick around, as this is going to be significantly different in style and tone. If you didn't, maybe don't rush off and check them out. I'm not particularly fond of my old stuff these days, especially after I discovered Cinema Sins and realized that my previous style wasn't all that dissimilar from that...thing.
This series will consist of fairly long posts, which means the schedule will by necessity be slow going and dependent entirely on the whims of my symptoms, which are capricious and ever-changing, like the winds. If you don't hear from me for a few weeks (or a month), don't worry.
Writing blog posts--writing anything--takes a much bigger investment in energy for me these days than it used to when I was healthy, so if you enjoy these, please take the time to comment and let me know, as I will probably not continue if it doesn't seem like they're finding some sort of an audience. And consider clicking that share button down there by the heart (click that too) and get the word out that more Kvothe-related content is available for the masses.
