The Name of the Wind

Never a good sign when I keep anxiously checking my book on tape to see how much closer I've gotten to the end.
I really wanted to like this one. There are so many many 5 star reviews!
The book drags for the first 7 chapters. Main char suffers from being the best at everything. The women ... a mere handful, mind you - all need to be saved. There's a big ol' chunk of the book I had to just try to ignore because it was so completely implausible (main char is the best at everything he does... yet, in spite of that, THIS happens... it makes the story work better for having happened, but it's so very very hard to buy into.) There are long meandering dialogues between characters that appear to be there as a writer's poetic exercise... these are distracting and don't seem to advance the story in any way.
But all that said - there were moments when the story picked up and I really enjoyed it. I didn't enjoy it enough to even consider picking up book 2, however. I'll just head to the wiki if I'm ever curious how it all works out in the end.