Continuing the trend of my last two reviews covering short, literary, fantasy books I’m here going to write a bit about another of my favorites: The Slow Regard of Silent Things, one of the oddest books I’ve ever read.

Patrick Rothfuss is known for the Kingkiller Chronicle series of big fat epic fantasy books. The two released so far, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, are about 700 and 1000 pages each. They’re filled with typical fantasy things like magic, journeys, swordplay, romantic angst, and so on. They’re beautifully written, the prose is so refined it’s nearly poetic, and the familiar tropes are often dealt with in surprising ways. But the books are still familiar, comfortable. The Slow Regard of Silent Things is not.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is the story of a week in the life of Auri, a mysterious secondary character from the main books. “Auri” (a name given to her by the series protagonist) is a young woman who lives in the tunnels underneath the University (the magic school where much of the action of the series takes place). She is described as frail and mercurial, and we the readers are given to believe some traumatic event pushed her into hiding from society and fractured her mind. Most likely, she has some very important story to tell about where she comes from and who she really is. The Slow Regard of Silent Things doesn’t tell that story. Instead, it transports readers into Auri’s mind so that we can see her life as she sees it. Told in very tight third person limited perspective, everything is described in Auri’s own strange language. With nothing for company but inanimate objects she finds in the tunnels, she ascribes names and a kind of personhood to everything around her. She is supremely sensitive, and can spend an entire day trying to find just the right spot to place a brass gear so that it won’t be upset or sullen. The climax of the story is a scene in which Auri makes some soap. This is a weird book. There’s an author’s warning in the front of saying that you probably shouldn’t buy it.

There’s little to no magic as such, and very little happens or is revealed that has bearing on the wider world. It’s an intense act of empathy with a broken person. All the drama lies in Auri’s emotional survival, and her fragile, self-navigated mental wellbeing. As far as “literary” goes, it rivals other books I’ve read outside of the fantasy genre. It plays with viewpoint and narrative structure enough to please any creative writing professor. This is the kind of book that will make you fall in love with stories from a technical standpoint.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things
Patrick Rothfuss
DAW Books, 2014