Creating a world is a slow process

Patrick Rothfuss was well aware that the natives were growing restless.

"I had somebody come up to me in a Pizza Hut and ask me where the hell the second book was," he says.

But the author, who spent nine contented years as an undergraduate in his native Wisconsin, is clearly not a guy who will be hurried.

It took him seven years to write The Name of the Wind, the acclaimed best-seller that was the first installment in his projected fantasy trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicles.

The sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, came out this week. Four years later.

Yes, Rothfuss, 37, is taking his own sweet time unfolding the tale of his hero, Kvothe (pronounced Quothe).

But the wait has been worth it.

Writes noted fantasy critic Paul Goat Allen on BN.com: "I have never read anything so totally immersive - and audaciously innovative - as Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle. The saga of Kvothe is nothing short of a timeless, towering masterwork."

Rothfuss' narrative wheel is not only slow, it grinds exceedingly fine.

The 700-page Name of the Wind barely took Kvothe into his teens. The nearly 1,000 page The Wise Man's Fear advances him only a few years further.

"I know better than to read reviews but I do it anyway," says the scruffy scribe. "Somebody described my pacing as 'glacial.' I wasn't thrilled, but I think they meant it in a not entirely unflattering way."

At this point, it probably won't surprise you to learn that Kvothe's slow-cook progress is intentional.

"I'm a fan of books that are almost languorous in their storytelling," Rothfuss says. "That is a little bit lost sometimes in the modern media that we have."

It isn't the books' lengths as much as it is the writer's meticulous work habits that make for such a sporadic publishing schedule.

"I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional," he says, laughing.

"I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group," he says, laughing robustly again.

Rothfuss has invested the Four Corners world of The Kingkiller Chronicles with remarkably rich and intricate detail, right down to its music, its myths, its currencies and its colloquialisms.