Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I despise this book and its sequel. The protagonist, Kvothe, is a Mary Sue. He is too special, too badass, too cool, and too good. He even has a weird hair color, as if Patrick Rothfuss was worried he wasn't getting the point across how special Kvothe is. He's also basically a ripoff of the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea, just far worse. The comparisons to Earthsea are bounteous, too, from the nature of the true naming-focused system of magic, the magical academy setting, and Kvothe's rich dick of an archrival. Speaking of Kvothe's archrival, there is a scene in which he is sexually assaulting a female student in the middle of the library and she's too uncomfortable to do anything about it, so we get to see how amazing Kvothe is as he stands up for her by... teasing the guy some. The clear intent is to show what a good person Kvothe is, but all I got out of it is that he's not a cartoonish, mustache-twirling villain, and that Patrick Rothfuss cannot write women. His female characters have no agency, no third dimension, and are primarily there to be objects, goals, set-dressing, and to swoon over Kvothe or poorly hide their urges to swoon. Even Kvothe's main love interest (in addition to being cliched and derivative), while she's initially established as competent, is defined entirely by her relation to men. She's running from a bad past due to men, she gloms onto various men to get ahead, and her primary attributes are being pretty and clever as related to her ability to manipulate men. My favorite author is (probably) Cormac McCarthy, so I can take a lot in terms of poorly-written women, or lack of female characters, but McCarthy admits he doesn't know how to write women (though I think he's being a bit too hard on himself), and so doesn't really try. Rothfuss doesn't know how to write women and needs to recognize that fact. Though I don't think he's terribly good at writing people, period.