I tried Kingkiller Chronicles & tried very hard to like it & appreciate it but I just can't I find it rather bad and sometimes I wonder why people even tag it as epic fantasy...
First half of Name of Wind was real good but afterwards it became plain bad... Author tries to repeat one thing in every chapter: The MC is perfect & smart. Well, that is good if you can actually show his wits/smartness but it just doesn't works if you say it... instead show it. MC impresing everyone with his singing & other musical abilities was extremly boring as well ;( Even second novel is entirely spend on showing lead perfect in everything (maybe not romance) .... I was extremly tired of the amount of text wasted for boring romantic feeling lead felt for the heroine & how he tried to find her in both novels Really bad read sadly.
Although being my favourite books, I have to agree with you on that matter.
I didn't feel tired of Kvothe's intelligence during the first read, nor the reread, but when i saw someone had wrote about that, I had to agree with him. Still, I never am tired of Kvothe, but it's a good point.
But man, his evolution in the second book is breath-taking.
And now to Denna. Yep. The only character I feel hatred towards. But you should focus in all the other good characters. Who is pretty much everyone else in the books, in my opinion.
About epic fantasy, it's not *only* epic fantasy. It's also a story about a man, a REAL story about a man, even if he is incredibly powerful (and that's why Pat writes so much about Denna, because, as a youngling, she is very important to him). But it definitely has epicness. It's a different shade of epic, though.
At least *I* am accostumed to see fantasy books where the MC gets to save all the fucking world. Instead of doing that, Pat tells a personal story.
Still, there are scenes that are undoubtedly epic in my opinion. I won't list them, because I don't want to spoil anything.
I know I probably sounded too pedantic. I'm sorry if I did.