So: what do you do when your successful author is in-between books in their best-selling series, with no sign of the next and the fans are baying for more?
Well, you could publish a potted history of your famously fictional world. Or you could do this – publish a stand-alone novella from the same famous fictional world, with a character who has already become known but you want to write more about.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a novella about Auri, who regular fans of The Kingkiller Chronicles will know, lives in the space below the library of The University.
From the publisher: The University, a renowned bastion of knowledge, attracts the brightest minds to unravel the mysteries of enlightened sciences like artificing and alchemy. Yet deep below its bustling halls lies a complex and cavernous maze of abandoned rooms and ancient passageways – and in the heart of it all lives Auri.
Formerly a student at the University, now Auri spends her days tending the world around her. She has learned that some mysteries are best left settled and safe. No longer fooled by the sharp rationality so treasured by the University, Auri sees beyond the surface of things, into subtle dangers and hidden names.
This is not the first such novella recently published in this manner. It seems to be a rather popular trend at the moment, though not uncommon in the small press. Robin Hobb’s The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince, was published last October and served as a pleasant entrée before her publication of the next Fool’s novel. Peter Brett is about to have his third novella in his Demon’s Cycle series published, (Messenger’s Legacy) after The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold. Here, Slow Regard seems to add to that list, in a very nice small hardback edition (which actually works better for me than the Kindle edition, of which I have both.)
How this one came about is a little unusual, though. With typical authorial self-doubt, Slow Regard is pretty much put out there as an experiment, an addendum to the main story of The Kingkiller Chronicles, and one that the author himself is not sure about, because it is different. This is clear from the author’s foreword, which begins, ‘You might not want to buy this book.’ It is further echoed in the Afterword, where Pat explains the rather odd genesis and history of this story. Originally begun for the Gardner Dozois/George RR Martin Rogues anthology, this quickly became a tale that grew in the telling, and one very different from the rest of the Kingkiller Chronicles. His beta readers generally all say the same thing: “I don’t know what other people will think. They probably won’t like it. But I really enjoyed it.”
So, I guess you can say that we have been warned. I can say that, if nothing else, it is interesting, if a little hard to describe exactly. We see the world, through Auri*, an enigmatic child-like waif we first met in The Name of the Wind. Much of the initial narrative tells of Auri’s daily tasks, time spent moving things around in the years of accumulated untidiness and clutter below the University, called the Underthing in the book. Auri spends most of her day putting things in their ‘right’ place, and Auri is made happy by doing so. It’s rather like some sort of OCD nightmare. Tension is created by Auri counting down seven days because she feels ‘something’ is going to happen, of which I will reveal no further.
Personally I enjoyed seeing Auri’s world from her unusual perspective, a character we’ve read about in The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, but from the view of Kvothe rather than Auri. It may not be to everyone’s taste, and at times is strange and even unsettling. For me it has a Bradbury-esque, or possibly a Neil Gaiman feel and tone, somewhat dreamlike or, at best, detached from any form of reality. One word of caution, though – for those who found Auri annoying in the main books you are not going to change your opinion based on what is here, either.
So, what makes it worth a read? It can be said that for readers wanting to know more of the world Pat has created, Slow Regard’s narrative fills out Auri’s backstory a little, though readers need to be aware that it does not hold any great revelation in the main books.
What shines out for me is that, more than ever, Slow Regard shows Pat’s gift for a phrase. It’s nice to read some events from Kingskiller written in the third-person perspective, which seems to have given Pat a new way of looking at things. The language is quite exquisite, even poetic, and begs to be read out aloud:
“Auri lifted up the glass and eyes the viscous liquid, clear as amber. It was lovely, lovely, lovely. It was like nothing that she’d ever seen before. It was thick with secrets and sea foam. It was prickle-rich with mystery. It was full of musk and whispers and tetradecanoic acid.”
Whilst Pat can be unfairly accused of spending time away from The Kingkiller Chronicles when he ‘should’ be writing the next book(a complaint to my mind heard far too often about authors these days – see also that author with the potted history, mentioned earlier) to my mind such tales are the author stretching his/her literary muscles. The Slow Regard of Silent Things does this, giving the reader a different and richer experience to that seen already.
In the end, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a charming, if rather melancholic tale, that leaves the reader feeling rather sad that it has finished. It is more of a mood piece than one attempting to provide a plot, and yet for many readers, like me, I think it is a tale that will stay with you after you have read it.
If nothing else, The Slow Regard of Silent Things shows an author willing to try ideas out, and is a great example of the old adage that a change can be as good as a rest for an author, and can actually do the writer some good.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss
With illustrations by Nathan Taylor
Published by Gollancz, October 2014
ISBN: 978 1 473 20932 9
160 pages
Review by Mark Yon
Mark Yon, October 2014
* Auri is an enigmatic character with more than a touch of Sally the rag doll from The Nightmare Before Christmas about her to my mind.
OR you could work on the book that everyone’s been waiting years for.
I want a him to spend the nessesary time to dream the details required for a third book, the first took years to mature into what was eventually released. If rushed it will disappoint, and I would rather an unfinished masterpiece, then a disappointing end that destroys all that came before.
Thank you Mark for your review, I expect to buy the book