Read this

As a literary genre, fantasy seems to have the most problems - derivative plots, dull pacing, shockingly bad sentence structure, and my biggest pet peeve: unpronounceable character names. [Side note to all Fantasy Authors: if your protagonist's name is so full of unlikely consonant combinations that I have to mentally sound it out every.single.time I read it, IT'S A BAD NAME.]

Obviously there are notable exceptions to my little rant (Tolkien, Martin and LeGuin are easy to hold up as immediate examples), but in general it's an incredibly unreliable genre if you enjoy even a moderate level of good writing. As you may have guessed by this point, it takes a fairly exceptional fantasy book to capture and hold my attention. So with all of this said - go read The Name of the Wind.

Right now. Buy it, borrow it, do whatever you have to do to get your little hands on a copy. It's an incredibly engaging story told by an startlingly talented writer, and if you end up even half as absorbed as I was, you'll spend every spare moment you have - including the ones where you should be making dinner or doing laundry so your family doesn't starve or go nekkid - reading it.

And when you've finished, go get the next book:

Repeat all the neglect of your family, then scream in frustration at the Literary Gods for allowing you to discover this series before it's complete, especially since if the spacing between the first two books is any indication, it will be another two years before the third book is published.

Now go away. Read the books. Trust me.