The Slow Regard of Silent Things

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DO NOT expect this to be a normal story because it isn’t. I think this falls into more of a character study. Auri is an interesting character, enough to carry an entire story like this, enough to follow around like a reality TV show but better than a reality TV show because she is far more interesting. ETA: Rothfuss is bad at math. He has Auri think that 9/10 of alchemy is chemistry and 9/10 of chemistry is waiting. But that tenth of a tenth of a part is . . . . That's not how the fractions combine. There is actually 19% unexplained. 81% of alchemy would be waiting. Another 9% is something else from chemistry and 10% is something alchemy specific.

Every day, Auri roams through Underthing doing just this --- putting things in their proper place. She feels distinct connections to all the inanimate objects that she finds, rescues in a way, and puts in proper places in the world she inhabits. She listens, and she fixes. Her connection to what we see as the real world is tenuous, but what is reality to her isn’t reality to others. Once you come to understand that, her world makes much more sense. She lives in a place she molded to fit her needs. There are no people --- only the ghosts of their having once been there. Auri views everything as a gift; each day is something to treasure, even if it needs to be coaxed into its full potential. Her work of rearranging and reworking is a reminder of how she views the world and her place in it. High fantasy is, by its nature, concerned with huge things: epic quests, world-shaking events. When an author has built an entire world, they naturally want to tell a story that fills all its corners. And that’s fine: I wouldn’t trade that massive scale for anything. But I’m also eternally glad that, even just this once, one of our greatest working writers dared to tell a tale this small. This isn't an unusual thing. Authors are always anxious before the release of a book. We worry if people will like it. We worry about the publisher being satisfied with the sales. We worry about the translations being good.The thing that I really find funny is that I have had, literally, hundreds of people leave comments similar to this one for me: “Nobody cares what you have to say. You’re just a nobody jealous of someone else’s success.” Usually it’s liberally laced with profanity or uninventive insults. First, I don’t expect anyone to give a crap what I have to say. I find it odd when anyone actually seems to. Second, just because nobody cares what I have to say, doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to say it anyway. Third, YOU clearly care what I have to say, or you’d not have taken the time out of your day to finish reading it and then comment on it. If you didn’t care what I had to say, you’d have read a few lines, rolled your eyes, and moved on. And lastly, why do so many people accuse me of being jealous? I don’t even understand that. To me that’s like trying to prove it’s raining outside by painting a wall. These two things are not related, and yet people, somehow, draw lines between them. I don’t lash out at things I envy. I work toward them instead, and anyone that does otherwise is wasting opportunities. I lash out when I wasted my time and money reading a book that was a complete waste of time and money. I only have one life, I’d rather not waste it reading long-winded, sexist garbage when I could be spending that time and money on something I actually enjoy. In a lot of ways, it’s going to be similar to The Slow Regard of Silent Things. It’s set in Temerant. It’s going to be illustrated by the fabulous Nate Taylor, and it centers on one of the secondary characters from the Kingkiller Chroniclers: Bast. Slow Regard is the story — or at least a story — of Auri. One of the most compelling, scene-stealing secondary characters in Kingkiller, Auri is a semi-feral young woman whose past is a mystery, and Slow Regard doesn't attempt to diminish that. She lives alone in a secret, sprawling network of tunnels she calls the Underthing, which lies beneath the University, the academy of magic that her friend Kvothe attends. My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as "quothe." Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I've had more names than anyone has a right to. The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it's spoken, can mean The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree. There will be opportunities to get signed copies. (More on this later, as we solidify promotional plans.)

It all began when Pat Rothfuss was born to a marvelous set of parents. Throughout his formative years they encouraged him to do his best, gave him good advice, and were no doubt appropriately dismayed when he failed to live up to his full potential. The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a brief, bittersweet glimpse of Auri’s life, a small adventure all her own. At once joyous and haunting, this story offers a chance to see the world through Auri’s eyes. And it gives the reader a chance to learn things that only Auri knows…. People are going to read this and be pissed.”Why yes, Pat. But amazingly his friend advises, “Let those other people have their normal stories . . . This story isn’t for them. This is my story. This story is for people like me.” It is a rare and great pleasure to find a fantasist writing...with true music in the words." —Ursula K. LeGuin, award-winning author of Earthsea The best epic fantasy I read last year.... He’s bloody good, this Rothfuss guy.” —George R. R. Martin, New York Times-bestselling author of A Song of Ice and Fire

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Follow the Kingkiller Chronicle’s most charming fae as he schemes and bargains his way through the small town of Newarre. While at first it seems that Bast must be master of this tiny domain, but while he cares nothing for the laws of man, there are older, deeper laws that bind him. And for all his cleverness, Bast finds himself trapped in ways he has never experienced before, and make hard choices and help an enemy. It only took a couple years to realize it doesn’t work that way. I can spend 10 hours writing a blog about how my Dad’s in hospice, explaining how the whole thing’s upheaved my life, been hard on my boys, and utterly destroyed any semblance of normalcy in my world…. Then later that day still get half a dozen people pinging me on different platforms asking me why it’s been years since my last book was out. Rothfuss introduced the story to his friend and illustrator Nate Taylor and asked him to create illustrations for the book. Rothfuss was specific about having no explicit pictures of Auri or any of the rooms in the Underthing. It took about two months to finalize the illustrations. [3] The story was eventually published as the standalone novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things in November 2014. [1] You however have been praised for releasing 2 books over the course of 7 years and milking his fans down to absolutely nothing. THE SLOW REGARD OF SILENT THINGS". www.starburstmagazine.com. Archived from the original on 2014-11-11.

She knew. She should have moved more gently with the world. She knew the way of things. She knew if you weren’t always stepping lightly as a bird the whole world came apart to crush you. Like a house of cards. Like a bottle against stones. Like a wrist pinned hard beneath a hand with the hot breath smell of want and wine. . . . 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. For those of you who compare Pat to Brandon Sanderson and the like, just stop. Not all writers work at the same pace or in the same way. They're different people. Rothfuss also writes more poetic prose than say Sanderson, and Brandon will tell you the same. This takes time. Especially when you have to work on a sentence that sounds right to you, while also conveying the message it needs to. That can take hours. an apple that thinks it is a pear, a bun that thinks it is a cat and a lettuce that thinks it is a lettuce

during that earlier first WMF meeting she serves Kvothe with a teacup. In SRFST she refers to a teacup as "his teacup." I just loved the way this book was written. Yes, it was an unconventional novella and didn’t follow the rules of a normal story but even though there didn’t happen a lot and even though this story had absolutely no plot, it still worked somehow?! I think it mainly lived from the atmosphere and the way Auri perceived her environment. And Kvothe for that matter! It’s obvious she’s in love with him and it was nice to know that my theory actually had a real foundation. ;-P People are saying here that Auri's shaping has nothing to do with naming. I don't think we can draw that conclusion. Auri clearly seems to know the names of things and is very concerned to not upset the world's balance. This feels to me just like the old named shaper distinction. Auri is a quintessential namer. She listens to all things and knows just where they need to be. Maybe when she shapes and imposes her will, she does so through forcing or changing their names. We didn't see that last bit, true, but we didn't see what she did there at all. I think Pat is keeping the metaphysics of naming purposefully unknowable until DoS. The characters are real and the magic is true.”—Robin Hobb, New York Times-bestselling author of Assassin’s Apprentice The art also really helps to make this book. It's really integral to see what Auri sees so you feel more connected with her doings.