The Slow Regard of Silent Things

About The Slow Regard of Silent Things

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a companion novella to Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle, following Auri—the strange, precise, quietly luminous girl who lives in the Underthing beneath the University—during the seven days that Kvothe is away. Nothing conventionally dramatic happens: Auri moves through the Underthing's abandoned rooms and passages, naming things, finding their right places, preparing a gift for Kvothe's return. The novella's power lies entirely in Auri's interiority and in Rothfuss's extraordinary prose. The magic system present here is not sympathy or naming but something more personal: Auri's profound sensitivity to the rightness of things—their proper places, proper names, proper relationships—functions as a kind of awareness that operates by its own rules and carries its own costs. She is a reluctant hero only in the sense that survival itself requires effort when the world feels this much. Rothfuss acknowledges in a prefatory note that this is a strange book that does not do what fantasy novels usually do. He is right—and that strangeness is precisely its value. A singular, luminous, heartbreaking piece of work for readers invested in the Kingkiller Chronicle's margins.

Tropes & Themes