This is tied with the Lord of the Rings for my favorite fantasy work of all time. It does so many things right without falling into so many pitfalls. I can tell the author has read a lot and really worked to produce something that both fulfills all of our desires for a classic epic fantasy tale, and yet feels distinct, beautiful, and original.
How can something be both classic and original at the same time?
It's classic because we have a hero who is orphaned at a young age, who then goes through epic travails for his coming-of-age, and becomes a man by the end of it. It has magic and action and adventure. He travels around this fantasy world and witnesses the inspiring, the mysterious, the monstrous.
And yet it's original. I can't remember the last time (ever, actually) that I read a fantasy book where the hero was a musician and a broke college student, constantly playing in an artist's bar and plying his magic to make a few pennies here and there to pay his way through college. So much of the plot revolves around money, and he has to track his money so meticulously, it's always on his mind, and I love it.
I also love the two magic systems. You have the magic of sympathy, which is a set of a few simple laws that can be easily understood but have a million applications. As the reader, I got to have a lot of fun really understanding the system and imagining the implications of this system on the world, seeing those play out, and then some. And a really cool thing was that he would get himself into certain predicaments and I would start imagining "ooh, that's an interesting problem. With his magic, and the tools he has available, what could you do to solve this problem?" And I would put the book down for a little bit and try to engineer the best solution I could, and then pick up the book and read and see what he came up with.
But then there's the second magic system: naming. Unlike the magic of sympathy, which is widely studied, for which there's a whole university that studies it, writes tomes on it, and builds up industry from it, the magic of naming is everything but. It is an ancient magic, and it is very poorly understood. It seems to have died out a long time ago, and no one knows how it works. It is mysterious, ethereal, elusive. All they know is that supposedly if you knew the true name of some substance (like earth, iron, or fire) then you could control that thing. The old books say that the most powerful of all names was the name of the wind.
There is one mad professor who has made it is project to discover how naming works, and our hero apprentices under him. The eccentric tasks he has him do, the lengths they go to, are really hilarious and interesting. A lot of the book centers around the discovering of this naming magic. While the magic of sympathy is a very functional thing that factors large into the plot, like perhaps the muscular system, by contrast, the magic of naming is like the soul of the book.
What more can I say without giving things away? This book feels very comfortable for me, reading as someone with a more scientific mind, who wants to understand how things work. I also really enjoy his eclecticism! You’ve got commentary on story itself throughout, you’ve got class and race, you’ve got love and action and adventure and science and magic and all that. Songs and plays and books are referenced throughout; he is a masterful world builder.
Probably the only troublesome thing is a bit of egoism in the main character. There is a sense of grandiosity in saying “oh yes, of course, our hero can do that too. Of course he’s also a master of this eighth thing in addition to the previous seven.” But that weakness is easily overlooked by all of the other things this book does so well.
One last thing. There are so many fantasy authors that fall short for me because what they don't have that I'm looking for is true beauty. That's the one thing Tolkien had that I find unmatched; others have better plot or characters or anything. But beauty and tone, that's what Tolkien has that I find unmatched. The beauty of his prose, and the beauty of his world.
And so I say that to say this...caveat, this book is in no way comparable to the Lord of the Rings; the two are quite distinct in many ways, but I must make one comparison. The Name of the Wind is the first book of fantasy that has restored that sense for me.
