DadReadsRomance

I waited close to a decade to read this book. Since it’s been published, I have graduated college, moved six or seven times, married the most amazing person in the world, and become a father. Through each of these milestones, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a novella about my second-favorite character from my favorite series, sat on my bookshelf. Periodically, it would leave my bookshelf to accompany me on a trip, but it would never make its way out of my backpack on those trips.

I waited too long to read it. I had always anticipated both the story and the prose to be among the most beautiful and the most eccentric that I have ever read. And although it meant these expectations, reading The Slow Regard of Silent Things more than five years after my most recent reading of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear is not the way of things. My patience was neither pragmatic, practical¹, nor perspicacious. My patience took away from how much I enjoyed this story, creating a desire to read it again after revisiting its predecessors. Unfortunately, I do not plan to revisit my two favorite books until it is time to read them to my child, as there are too many stories I have yet to experience and too few moments to experience them.

If I had should have read this book right around the time I finished my last read of The Wise Man’s Fear, which is what I recommend anyone reading it for the first time do, I suspect I would consider it a 5/5. It is a wonderful story and, in many ways, a Romance. I think it is meant to be read in one sitting (something I did not do). You may want to double your time budget for a book of this length if you aim to do so—I found the novel’s writing style required me to reread much of it to get the full meaning. I would also take the author’s foreword to heart. It is a great story that is not for everyone.

Overall Rating

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¹ Is this redundant? Perhaps. To me, my strategy should be pragmatic; my execution should be practical.

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