Whether he's getting banned from the Archives, having sex with fairy gods, or making us wait a billion years to see what happens in the third book of his story, Kvothe is always on his grind. You might argue that I’m conflating Patrick Rothfuss, the author of The Kingkiller Chronicle, with his lead character. To that I’d say that characters have unique agency in authors’ minds and hearts, and it’s my firm belief that if Kvothe was easier to write, Rothfuss would have long since moved on by now.

But he’s not. In The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, the first two books in Rothfuss' trilogy, Kvothe appears to be at once witless and genius, tactless and adaptable, weak and powerful, impotent and controlling. It’s one thing to have to figure out how a story featuring such a challenging protagonist...