The Kingkiller Chronicle tells the life story of a man named Kvothe. In the present day, Kvothe is a rural innkeeper, living under a pseudonym. In the past, he was a wandering trouper and musician who grew to be a notorious arcanist (wizard), known as the infamous "Kingkiller." The series is framed as the transcription of his three-day-long oral autobiography, where he "trouped, traveled, loved, lost, trusted and was betrayed". Present-day "interludes" concern his life as an innkeeper, with each present day depicted in a separate book. The series is a secondary world fantasy. It has its own magic systems, mixing alchemy, sympathetic magic, sygaldry (a form of runic magic combined with medieval engineering), and naming (a type of magic that allows the user to command the classical elements and objects), plus others.