Artistic depiction of Kvothe
I would have given this story a rating of five out of five if it weren't for the fact that the author has failed to bring out an inspirational female character. Auri is an intriguing character, eccentric like Luna Lovegood, but she is not a central figure in the story. Denna, who is supposed to be Kvothe's love interest fails miserably to meet the hype that is built up about her before she is introduced to the reader. She is generally useless, missing in action when Kvothe needs help and mostly just eye candy, though her dialogue is marked with forceful wit and bravado, which just makes her even less likable and almost calculating, in sharp contrast to Kvothe's innocent, caring nature around her. The most strikingly appalling behavior is during the dragon rampage when Kvothe fails to wake her up as she sleeps "exhausted" in the wilderness, so that he sprints off by himself to save the entire town of Trebon, and the following morning, when an injured Kvothe wakes up at the town inn, one would expect Denna to at least be at his bedside tending to his wounds, but that is not the case; to the contrary, Kvothe goes looking for her in worry, carrying food for her too, only to find she has disappeared without so much as bothering to check if he is alive or dead. The final nail in the coffin to her failure as the female lead is the dismissal of her undesirable characteristics such as her disloyalty and flightiness as simply her being a "wild thing", which is supposed to absolve her from taking responsibility for her actions while the hurt she causes is compared to collateral damage caused by a natural disaster like a storm (described as "cruel" but not "wicked", whatever that means). The author would have done well to omit this relationship altogether and focus on the profound bond Kvothe has with Bast instead, who cares deeply about him.
Finally, for an empathetic, intelligent kid who has suffered horrifying cruelty and trauma, Kvothe is surprisingly enmeshed in carnism, displaying its telltale signs of disconnect and contradictions. He recognizes live animals as individuals with feelings, as shown by his kind handling of Keth-Selan, yet displays callous indifference to violence hurled on animals deemed less worthy, particularly apparent when he has a pig killed for him, albeit out of sight. He expresses a hint of remorse about the dragon's predicament but had no qualms about devising the elaborate plans to poison him. While it is true that he has been desensitized to gore and forced himself to kill rabbits to avoid starvation as a child, one would expect him to relate more to innocent victims of violence, not much different from himself.
