I originally picked up this read due to Preuse Project on YT recommendation video about books which have school elements - a specific sub genre of novels that I am always drawn to. Kudos to her, the University our main character attends is a heavy focus in this book so I did really like it! The world building, pace, magic, was all so wonderfully written that I felt like I was literally alongside Kvothe (our MC) as he went on this journey. The majority of the plot itself also seemed to have purpose and I was carried away at a great pace.

Notice I say majority though. Something to note is that this is a story in a story. Kvothe is in his bar when a story teller comes in and convinces Kvothe to recount his past. Then what we read 90% of the time is this recount. The other 10% of present time non recount stuff is then interspersed throughout the chapters. This broke immersion for me and those pages left me with a sense of... wtf?! There's some demony stuff going on but none of it is explained so I kept waiting for the ball to drop and some connection to be made between the present day demony stuff and Kvothe's recount. Unless I compltely missed something (which admittedly is possible) there didn't seem to be a link so ... yeah??

But look, don't let that atop you from picking this up. I thoroughly enjoyed the read and got through the 700-800 pages relatively quick!

triggers: death, mention of prostitution, starvation