Next to fans waiting for the next book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, few have had it as hard as fans of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle. This trilogy follow Kvothe, a brilliant young magic user on a quest to find the otherworldly beings who killed his parents as a child. So far, we’ve gotten two books in the series: The Name of the Wind in 2007 and The Wise Man’s Fear in 2011. The third and (presumably) final book in the series, The Doors of Stone, is still en route, with no real sign of when it might be hitting store shelves.
And now, the One Shot podcast has revealed that Patrick Rothfuss will be involved in a new Kingkiller Chronicle story…but it’s not The Doors of Stone.
Instead, Rothfuss will be voicing one of several students at the University Arcanum, the only university on the continent of Temerant and the place where Kvothe goes to refine his skills; we spend a lot of time there in the books. The new story will be told across episodes of the podcast, with chapters arriving every Monday. Here’s a synopsis:
"Four students in The University’s Arcanum get unlucky draws for their tuition interviews with the masters and have to reckon with the possibility of taking a semester off. The well-intentioned Volli (Patrick Rothfuss), the bookish and distractible Garlich (Bee Zelda), the prideful and stylish Amara (Satine Phoenix), the irrepressibly rebellious Chett (Liz Anderson), and the biggest horse you’ve ever seen."
Why, you ask, is Rothfuss giving us a new Kingkiller story in serialized podcast form rather than pushing forward with the next novel? It ends up that the idea for the new story arose when Rothfuss was working with James D’Amato, who hosts the One Shot podcast, on a new Kingkiller Chronicle role-playing game. “Telling stories like this will give me a chance to show off corners of my world that don’t appear in my novels.” Rothfuss said. “It’s playful and collaborative in a way that I really miss. Most importantly, these are stories that will let people spend time in my world sooner rather than later, while they’re waiting for the next book to come out.”
Rothfuss has done Kingkiller side stories before, most notably with his novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which focused on the character of Auri, a mysterious friend of Kvothe’s who lives beneath the University. That was a good story, and hopefully this new one will be, too. But when the appetizer is over, I think I speak for a lot of fans when I say we’re eager to get the main course.
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h/t Comic Years