The Slow Regard of Silent Things • Patrick Rothfuss

I was delighted to see that a new book by Patrick Rothfuss is finally appearing. Like so many others, I first thought we were at last continuing with Kvothe and The Kingkiller Chronicle. First disappointment: the book is not a continuation. Second disappointment: it isn’t really a book at all in terms of length, more of a slim booklet. For the price of €17.95, the sheer amount offered here is not much. Anna Karenina at only €16.90 for nearly 1,300 pages of the finest literature is the other extreme, but it does show how absurdly little one gets with The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Granted, the comparison limps a bit, but I can’t make sense of the pricing here.

The book itself is, as we’ve come to expect from Klett-Cotta, very handsome and also features several high-quality illustrations by Marc Simonetti. In that regard, hardly anyone can compete with Klett. I own numerous books (mostly hardcovers) from Klett-Cotta, my absolute favorite publisher when it comes to fantasy.

I’ve read all the books in The Kingkiller Chronicle and found them very entertaining. However, it’s been quite a while since I read them, and I’ve already forgotten a lot. I don’t know whether it’s because of that, or because I have a quirk that simply doesn’t match the quirk this book has. I think it’s true: either you think the book is brilliant, or you consider it complete rubbish. I fall into the latter camp.

Patrick Rothfuss is someone who, in terms of narrative elements, pulls every lever a storyteller can. He creates a lack and baits the reader with it throughout, flatters a reader’s narcissism, grants the reader knowledge advantages, and uses all the other small, dirty tricks to make a story exciting. That came through so clearly in his earlier books that it made them even more fun to read. Sometimes you love being seduced, misled, and dragged through all the valleys and peaks of human existence.

From that standpoint, I can understand why Rothfuss wanted to do something completely different here. So he wrote this short story in which he equips a side character from his books with every psychological compulsion a normal person can imagine—from obsessive need for control to compulsive washing to panic attacks. In doing so, he forgoes all the tools he otherwise uses to the fullest in his other books and writes a story that consists almost exclusively of actions, with the person defined only by her distorted, emotionally tinted view of a sparse environment. The central driving force of the story is an utterly exaggerated anthropomorphism.

This purist style may please some as a brief interlude. When it comes to literature, however, I’m anything but a minimalist. I like things grand; I want people who feel so real that they don’t present me with their simplistic otherness but, with all the facets of the multilayered personality every human being possesses, show me something remarkable. It doesn’t always have to be thrilling, but it has to feel real.

The whole framework annoyed me. The story doesn’t really have the 173 pages claimed. Numerous blank and half-blank pages at chapter breaks, plus the illustrations, shrink the text down to a very short story. And that sketch portrays a young woman who may captivate through her attractiveness and her distinctive way of seeing the world, but beyond that the story has nothing to offer. Some may find the naivety, simplicity, and purity fascinating. The whole concept couldn’t convince me in the slightest. And the fact that such a short book has a 9 (!!!) page afterword in which the author apologizes that his story turned out so poorly and that he hadn’t really wanted to publish it—but everyone thought it was so great—leaves a very sour aftertaste on yet another level.

I’m deeply disappointed in Klett-Cotta. I know the concept of releasing such a short booklet from Tad Williams’s The Burning Man. There, it worked quite well; the brief story feels like a condensed overture. The central melody, the feeling, the boundless depth of Osten Ard are palpably suggested again; it touched me and reminded me of the magnificent saga. But even that effect didn’t materialize for me with The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

Conclusion: For me, this book is the flop of the year. I’m bitterly disappointed and will look very carefully in the future whenever a new Patrick Rothfuss title appears. Given the story, the single young woman who appears in it, and the completely stripped-down content, I can only advise against reading it—fully and emphatically.

Book information: The Slow Regard of Silent Things • Patrick Rothfuss • Klett-Cotta Hobbit Presse • 173 pages • ISBN 9783608960204