Is that so important? Once I explain that framework to you, if my characters are clever using the framework, then you can appreciate their cleverness at a different depth, and it's very satisfying. I can look at my chalkboard here and see all of the delta calculations for how much energy it takes to boil gold. I have run the numbers about how much heat it takes for this and that, and accounting for slippage, or whatever. I literally have the math for a lot of these things. How scientific is sympathy? It's hard to get more scientific. I was on the road to becoming a mechanical engineer before I fell from grace and had a couple really great philosophy classes and just proceeded to dick around as an undergrad for nine years. I was also influenced pretty firmly by some modern, this-world science. I kind of cherry-picked from that and built them into a cohesive system.

And alchemy, what Newton used to do back in the day. A lot of Renaissance concepts of Hermetic magic, Umberto Eco's Island of the Day Before, stuff like that. What can you tell us about the origins of sympathy? Some of it I just straight up stole. A bunch of people did it before Jesus-and, to be fair, some people did it better. But honestly, by the time Jesus did that, it was old news. In terms of the wider mythology for your world, do we detect Christian influences? What it has is the archetype of the self-sacrificing god. If I were gonna go back and mythologize my life, I would leave out so many of the terrible choices that I made.

He is full of terrible decisions all the time. Oh, he's telling this story where he's so cool all the time.' Are you reading the same story that I wrote? Because, like, he is constantly shitting the bed.

But I will say that one of the reads I find a little irritating is where they think, 'Oh, he's the best at everything. How much is Kvothe playing up his own story? Mythologizing his own self? It is very fair to wonder, How much of this is real? How much of this is true? Unfortunately, any answer that I gave to that would be destructive to the story.Ĭan you say anything on the subject? However people read the book makes me happy, as long as they enjoy themselves. If I wanted to watch people sucking and being dumb, I would just spend all my time on Twitter.

Name of the wind third book