the name of the wind

george r r martin is a bastard. terry goodkind is a pervert. robert jordan is the mayor of boston and the wheel of time is a monstrous, living big dig.

patrick rothfuss is a bard.

i remember loving the first of jordan's books. i remember the childish excitement when i went to the bookstore and saw SIX more novels in the series, some with spines as wide as my clenched fist. i remember that excitement slowly dimming, dulling. i don't know. insert analogy here. something about my excitement turning into a sense of betrayal, we'll say like a delicious steak turning to shit in one's gut. diarrhea fucking shit. bloody, even. i'm just searching here, but it was a terrible feeling. maybe time has dulled that pain. or my brain has blocked it. but it was bad. i remember being vaguely excited when i heard book 8 was coming out. i remember the disappointment, again, like an old acquaintance. i remember the reason i bought book 9, out of some weird notion that i ought to finish what i started. i remember buying book 10 because i was leaving for the Hong Kong airport in a few hours and i had nothing else to read. i remember shaking my fist at the sky, at jordan, when i heard book 11 was on its way. the big dig doesn't do it justice. even though it killed a woman.

martin is a fucking asshole. simple and true. nothing else needs be said on the subject. reading his books is like slowly, so slowly lowering oneself into a hot tub that used to be comfortable. it's too goddamn fucking hot, but i remember when it felt real nice, so i keep waiting for it to be bearable again. but it just stays hot as shit and burns the fuck out of you.

goodkind is a hack with some strange anti-socialism agenda hidden in terribly conspicuous parables that can sometimes span AN ENTIRE FUCKING NOVEL. that kind of did it for me. i liked books 1 and 2 very much, up to 5 was ok, but #6 pretty much shut the lid on this one. how someone passes that off as a legitimate book and still gets _any_ sales on his next is entirely beyond me. him being a perv with his fingering and his overtly misogynistic attitudes towards women and his shoutingly obvious desire for personal sex slaves with magical powers doesn't help.

which brings me to rothfuss. i remember loving many first books in series. series es. eh? anyways, i remember the excitement. like coming back home after meeting someone new and interesting, and thinking it over. how she was too pretty. too interesting. too interested. something's wrong.

i know that feeling. sometimes i think i've spent my whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop. what the fuck does that even mean? is dropping only one shoe a good thing? it's that second one - dropping the pair is a bitch.