It is a rare and great pleasure to find a fantasist writing…with true music in the words.”—Ursula K. LeGuin, award-winning author of Earthsea

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a brief, bittersweet glimpse of Auri’s life, a small adventure all her own. At once joyous and haunting, this story offers a chance to see the world through Aurir’s eyes. And it gives the reader a chance to learn things that only Auri knows.... Auri is one of my favorite side characters from the series, and the significant level of emotional resonance found in the brief glimpse of her life in The Underthing is one of the main reasons why The Slow Regard of Silent Things is important to read for fans of the series. This won’t be a book for everyone, and I’m sure many readers would have valid reasons on why this book doesn’t work for them. I, after all, was one of those readers on my first read. On the Author’s Endnote of the novella, Rothfuss has mentioned that readers might enjoy The Slow Regard of Silent Things more on a second reading because most of Rothfuss’s stories are better on reread, and I have to 100% agree with this notion. I’ve read your book like the others in this thread, and just as they did, I liked it. It made me feel broken as I am, and made me touch that part of me that belongs to those no longer with us. Please don’t worry Pat, it was beautiful and I have lots of things I want to say about why I found it so beautiful that haven’t formed coherent sentences yet.For all these reasons, I wrote my first ever Author's Foreword. I expected my editor to cut it. But she didn't. And when I asked her if I could share it here. She said I could. The book is your child in many metaphorical ways but (and I hate to say this too you) you know damn well that there are things WAY more important than words for commercial sale. I have two kids of my own, not so different in age from Oot, and I absolutely second everything you say. Y’know, we *totally* understand. Not only are mute objects characters in Slow Regard, they receive character development. On one level, the objects are just reflections of Auri’s psyche, but we come to care about them just as much as she does.

ps. you may not have realised, but you really love the word ‘coruscant’…or maybe I really love the word ‘coruscant’ and therefore the number of times I noticed it was a matter of attention bias. I don’t know, either way it has been firmly drummed into my vocabulary. This is the story of several days in the life of Auri, the reclusive, innocent, and damaged girl whom Kvothe befriends in "The Name of the Wind." In fact, it is Kvothe who gives Auri her name, a perfect name for this girl who only emerges in the moonlight. side books (to be released in october 2014, months after the announced release date of the doors of stone) Through the seven days narrated in the book, Auri explores the Underthing, change the placement of objects to put them in their proper places, make soap as her soap simply disappeared, looks for artifacts and objects that piqued her interest and show the reader her thoughts and feelings, her views on the world and on its workings. Apart from these things that are part of her day to day life, alone in the Underthing, the story also tells of how she thought about the three gifts that she gave to Kvothe at the end of that week, how she prepared a place for him to live in the Underthing, how she created the candle she gives him and of how she thought about the third gift.

Nate Taylor

Her only other concern is what gift to bring Kvothe. “The ice-blue bottle wasn’t entirely at home. It huddled on the lowest, leftist shelf upon the eastern wall. Auri touched it gently, doing her best to reassure. He liked bottles. Might this be a seemly gift?” The importance of animating objects in Slow Regard is fascinating to me: It’s a vastly more oblique approach to the power of names than the Kingkillernovels ever take, yet I believe Auri gets closer to the heart of it than Kvothe does. Readers might remember the scene from The Wise Man’s Fear (set just after the events of Slow Regard) when the memorably mad Master Namer Elodin talks as easily with Auri on her own terms as Kvothe does. This is why. This is mainly focused towards all you keyboard warriors out there. I'm being a bit of a hypocrite right now, I know.

Just the same way, we know Temerant—or Middle-earth, or Narnia, or Westeros—isn’t a true world. But that doesn’t stop us from loving it.But the more I roll this around in my head, the more it troubles me. Ulysses was one of those books that I was supposed to read for class but I never did. All I really know about it is that it’s one of the all-time front runners for pretentious, literary self-indulgence, right? This fast-moving, vivid, and unpretentious debut roots its coming-of-age fantasy in convincing mythology.”— Entertainment Weekly The Slow Regard of Silent Things centers on Auri (Kvothe does not appear) after The Name of the Wind. Her life is a solitary one but full of wonder. None of this is to say that the writing is not excellent, or that there's nothing compelling here. There's a wealth of imagination on show, presented with rare skill, and I enjoyed it. I just went through the process of registering here so that I could comment, which I’ve never done before even though I’ve been reading your blog for ages, because I feel like it’s really important for me to say this to you, and you seem like the kind of fellow who takes the time to read the comments people take the time to write. It probably feels important in a mostly selfish and self-centered way, but I hope it feels important to you, too, after you’re done reading.