3,5 stars. A very hard book to rate. The writing is excellent, the world and magic system are well thought out and interesting, the whole narrative structure of the book is brilliant and the overall prose is very accessible...so why am I not giving it five stars but three instead? Honestly I'm not sure, I really wanted to be mad about this book, but I was disappointed instead. Perhaps it's because my expectations of this book were just too high. With all the raving reviews I expected it to be next best thing in fantasy, and it turned out to be just solid fantasy but nothing mindblowing. I also had problems with the pacing of the story, I feel like the 660-odd pages could have been less and the book would have been better for it. The first 150 pages and the last 50 were exciting, but in between there were events that were unnecessarily dragged out (e.g. the draccus thing). Many events were also highly predictable and nothing really managed to surprise or shock me.Also, for some reason I did not seem to find a connection with Kvothe. I usually like these hyper-intelligent-arrogant-stubborn type of character, but I couldn't care less about Kvothe (the teenage one, I love the old and child Kvothe though). I think it's because he has his character faults (impatience etc.), which is usually not a bad thing and is usually overlooked most of time, but throughout the 660-odd pages he does not seem to have any character development, which I desperately wanted. Also, side characters like Wilem and Simmon didn't really come alive, as I didn't feel the bond between the three, which had me guessing at why they were friends with Kvothe in the first place. All in all, it is definitely not a bad book and I must say I enjoyed it on some level, and maybe if I didn't have such high expectations it would have been 4 stars instead of 3 (thus my rating of the 3,5 in the end). It's just that it did not have me raving at the end of it, which is of course something that differs from person to person. I think the main thing to keep in mind is to avoid developing such high expectations for it as I had, and I think the book will prove to be quite an enjoyable read.So in the end, do I want to read the sequel? Yes, but it could wait for another year... Would I recommend it? Yes, certainly (I have many friends who did find it mindblowing)! Did I absolutely love it? No, but you just might...