WHY?

After nearly 200 pages in, Rothfuss turns his back on all that he had done and resorts to one of the most tired of all fantasy cliches: pages-long flashback stories that do nothing but WORLD BUILD. Ugh. So disappointing.

Imagine how much better this would be had Rothfuss only started the story Skarpi tells, but then cuts to when the story is finished, and then we, the readers, have to decipher what Kvothe learned, what he was told, during the present narrative.

But no. Instead, we have to read pages about the world's past, it's lore, it's mythology. The narrative stops dead in its tracks while we read about ancient battles, gods, and demons. Shoot, one of the stories is the Christ story with only the thinnest of veils place over it.

This world building technique has got to stop. It's old and tired, and does nothing but pad the pages, thus turning a taught 400 page story into a bloated 700 page epic, the first part of a trilogy no less that will probably be stuffed with world-building lore.

I'm so very disappointed.