Patrick Rothfuss' acclaimed novel The Name of the Wind has perhaps one of the highest average ratings of all the books on Goodreads (4.55), with almost 250,000 5-star ratings. Nothing could go wrong with such a novel ... or can it? I'm very difficult to convince with fantasy novels; few authors within this genre (namely J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin and Mari Ronberg) have so far managed to hook me right from the first chapter without losing their quality throughout the course of their novel(s). In this book, Patrick Rothfuss focuses on the fate of his protagonist Kvothe in a clever, thoughtfully structured coming-of-age story about his difficult youth, his teens and early adolescence, after which the second part of the trilogy will pick up to recount later parts of his life. As it turned out, the first installment in the Kingkiller trilogy was way more difficult to get through than I originally thought after reading about positive comparisons between TNotW and the Harry Potter books. 
 Which leads me directly to main parts of my criticism: the similarities to Harry Potter. I tried hard, really hard not to constantly compare those two books with each other, but too much reminded me of Hogwarts in this book, and those similarities were not always in favor of TNotW. First of all, the world-building in this novel is intriguing, though not extraordinary. The author didn't include any reasons for caring about the world, so that ultimately I wouldn't have been in tears if an earthquake had shattered this world completely. 
 Secondly, the character development of the protagonist, who is also the first-person narrator of the tale which is incorporated in the framework plot, is what main parts of this book are about, yet so many other characters included in this book lack originality and varying aspects which could help to find reasons to care about them at all. If I am honest, I was disappointed by the cast of characters. We have Kvothe - the most well-developed character of the book - and Denna, a mysterious and unique female protagonist who is superbly introduced and implemented into the story ... and apart from them, I can't even recall most of the other characters' names. 
 And this is exactly the point when I can't help but compare this book to Rowling's Harry Potter world. 
 The similarities are rather obvious (and I won't even mention how Kvothe might be called a second Harry): What is called Hogwarts in HP, can be found as the University here. Everybody knows Draco Malfoy - but few know he has a twin brother with different looks, but very similar manners called Ambrose in this book. Of course, we have other characters: Simmon and Wilem, who were introduced as Kvothe's friends and might have had the potential to turn into interesting characters and good friends for Kvothe. The latter they did, yet they remained stereotypical and like blank pieces of paper. Patrick Rothfuss also introduces a bunch of female characters, all of them unmemorable and boring (with the exception of Auri who might have more potential in the upcoming novels). And last but not least, there are the teachers of the University. In Hogwarts, we have Snape, Lupin, Hagrid, McGonagall, Trelawney, Filch ... all of them memorable figures every HP reader should have no trouble with connecting to their specific characteristics. And in The Name of the Wind ... it was simply impossible to feel interested in any of the teachers. Maybe someone else felt different about this aspect, but I wasn't able to pretend interest in even one of them. 
 However, if you feel in the mood for it, you might just as well find hundreds of similarities between J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I don't accuse Patrick Rothfuss of copying certain plotlines, because all those aspects are rather common in fantasy novels and I don't think for even one minute that Rothfuss looked at the Harry Potter novels and thought, "this looks nice, I might use it for my own book". No, my reason for listing these lies mainly in my personal feeling that The Name of the Wind was not very original and did not live up to its hype. Feel free to disagree with me. 
 Patrick Rothfuss has a lot of adventure, romance and violence to offer in his book. We get to care about Kvothe early one because what happens to him helps us relate to his character, but there was nothing specifically outstanding about the character himself. What convinced me of awarding at least three stars was the well-developed plot, the atmosphere of the University itself and the romance part which felt natural to the story and as a requirement for the characters to develop into what they later became. 
 (Initially after reading the novel, I was still ready to give it 3.5 stars, but more than a month after finishing it, the impression it left on me is so vanishingly low that I can't award more than three stars for the positive aspects I outlined in my review.) 
 I do realize that my review is not written very objectively, but since I wasn't able to find literary significance in this work, I ultimately decided to center my review around my subjective thoughts. Most of you will think differently about the book - after all, just look at the average rating -, so just keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and all of you can feel free to love the book as much as most of you do. 
 (Buddy Read with Dustin!)