Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Here’s the thing with fantasy—it was the genre that got me into reading. Fantasy books were my escape in late elementary and high school, my videogames of choice and there was no greater joy than finding a new series to get into.

I would even go as far to say that it was the genre that influenced my passion for magic.

However, fantasy requires attention, time, concentration and a willingness to let go of the world. It requires a great deal of imagination to visualize the scenes happening. These were all things I was dropping as I left my adolescent years. In their place were thick textbooks, non-fiction and adult responsibilities.

Every so often, a fantasy book would tug at me out of curiosity, but my concentration just wasn’t there. I feared that either the genre was getting complicated for the sake of getting complicated, or that I had lost my imagination for it (there was some of both).

This book pulled me right back to my younger years.

It was a complete escape into another world and every page felt like a magic tome, written in just the right way to pull you into its world. There was such a depth to it that pulled you right in and didn’t let you surface for air… even if it was late at night and my wife was kicking me to get some sleep.

It’s a story—about a story—told through a storyteller. In the end, you have seeds of doubt about the credibility of it all, but you just don’t care. You want to know more.

Nothing about the writing is pretentious and nothing about the world is complicated. The writing gently takes your hand and guides you through it all, slowly wading you through the waters until you’re naming areas like people on the west coast can name of the freeways in California.

Rothfuss, you wrote a gateway book that is getting me to jump back into the genre and I thank you.