This does include spoilers.Like everyone who purchased this book, I'm eagerly awaiting the third installment of the Kingkiller Chronicles. Saw this and thought: "Hey- a book by Patrick Rothfuss, why not?!"I was definitely put off by his warning that it wasn't a good book, and I probably wouldn't like it, so, I shouldn't get excited, and maybe shouldn't even read it, just in case I am disappointed.But I'd already bought it at this point so I wasn't going to NOT read it. Besides, Jane Austen assumed everyone would hate her character Emma, but we all know THAT isn't quite how it panned out. Anyhow, I digress.I'm the sort of reader who enjoys a thought-through plot line. But I need more than that to actually get into a book. I need believable, consistent, relate-able characters. Rothfuss gave me that in his other books. He gave me complicated, intricate, REAL characters that I fell completely in love with.Auri, however, confused the *&#$ out of me. She was just.... inexplicable. She fit into the story, don't get me wrong, but I didn't understand her. I certainly didn't relate to her. It didn't really matter though, certainly didn't affect my view of Rothfuss' writing or Kvothe's story at all.I was hoping to get to see Kvothe in this short story, as I'm sure many of you are/were... which may explain Rothfuss' hesitation to even publish this book since Kvothe is never physically present.There is one character. One. And she's perfect.I felt like the luckiest fly on the wall to see a week of Auri's life in her Underthing. She knows she has 7 days until He comes to visit, and you get to see her preparing for it like it's Christmas or something. It's adorable. She's trying to find a gift but nothing is QUITE right.God, I loved this story.Not only was the writing exquisite, the verbiage was so uniquely suited that now I want to hear Auri describe the entire world, instead of just her own.I can't possibly imagine being bored reading this book. I can't possibly imagine putting it down. In it's own way, it's better to me than his other works.Auri is so complex and so different and so refreshing.She's broken. And she goes through her life fixing things. Little things. Little, insignificant things. Things that, in anyone else's observation, don't need fixed. It's frustrating at first.What is she doing? Why wouldn't she do *this* in that situation. Why would she almost drown to dredge up trash from the bottom of a freezing pool of water?Because that is the proper way of things.Everything has a name. Objects, spaces, rooms, chemical reactions. If something doesn't have a name she feels sorry for it. Because He gave her a name, and with that name she isn't as lost or as lonely. The name He gave her is her constant positive throughout her bizarre ups and downs.Every day has a type. A doing day or a making day... and Auri knows because she can feel what sort of day it is.The moon has it's own personality. Sometimes she needs to avoid stepping in the moonlight because it's in a bad mood.As she describes it, you can see the moon she means, even though she uses words that don't exist.She's so clever and resourceful! But you know she doesn't even have to be resourceful. She just is... because that's the proper way of things. Even when she wants something to be different, she won't break out of her own definition of what is proper. Even though there is no one there to see her, no one there to hold her responsible, no one there to chastise her. She's one of the strongest characters you'll ever meet. She doesn't think well of herself. She forgets to eat. She berates herself for being selfish. But she thinks even less of the people who don't understand the proper way of things.Throughout the story you see her warring with herself. In our world she would be termed bipolar, and autistic, and maybe even schizophrenic. But she's created a life that works for her. And she focuses all her energy on what she perceives to be the happiness of objects in her care. She ignores her own needs. She won't change or bend the proper way of things. The only time she'll step out of her self-imposed rules is for Him.Even when I'm screaming for her to take some food from a full larder she finds herself in, I'm secretly hoping she won't. That she'll stick to her own rules, and be rewarded for doing things the proper way.She does everything in her power to keep her Underthing to herself, but then creates a safe space down there for Him too. She knows the name of Alchemy. Of Chemistry. But she won't use it. She won't bend the world. You just get this feeling that she's broken from a loss. Broken from doing something that now, through caring for the world in the proper way, she is doing penance for. But when she knows she needs the third and final gift for Him, it's okay for her to use her power to bend the world a bit. She's connected to Him. Like she's connected to everything. She's amazing.I could seriously write a book about how much I like this book.I'm going to re-read the others just to re-visit her character from a whole new perspective.I can see how some people won't like this book. It requires a lot of interpretation. It requires a lot of patience. It requires a desire to UNDERSTAND a complex character. If you don't care to learn about Auri, don't read it.If you're fascinated by the world Rothfuss has created and want to see a whole other aspect of it through the eyes of an incredible, albeit very strange, little girl, it's definitely for you!