Patrick Rothfuss drops details about The Doors of Stone

What characters get explored more in the third Kingkiller Chronicle book? Will there be a time jump? What of the Fae? Patrick Rothfuss answers fan questions.

Fans of The Kingkiller Chronicle have been waiting for author Patrick Rothfuss to release The Doors of Stone for almost a decade now. Similar to George R.R. Martin with The Winds of Winter, we still have no idea when the next book will be published. However, while streaming over on Twitch, Rothfuss was happy to answer plenty of fan questions.

Rothfuss does a lot of cool live streams on his Twitch account. Sometimes he kicks back and plays video games, often joined by his kids. Other times he writing advice to aspiring writers, or participates in virtual group chats with other authors. He streams a lot of his awesome Worldbuilders charity work on there, too! This latest Q&A was about The Doors of Stone, and while he obviously didn’t give away any big spoilers, it did not disappoint.

Watch it below, and we’ll hit some of the highlights.

Returning characters

First, Rothfuss fields some questions about which settings and characters we’ll see more of in The Doors of Stone; Kvothe traveled to quite a few new places in The Wise Man’s Fear, but ended up back at the University.

Rothfuss confirms that Mola — a University student who works in the Medica — will be developed more in The Doors of Stone. He’s also excited about exploring more about the Fae, a realm where there dwell a variety nonhuman species. “Yes, you will see more of the Fae,” he said. “Absolutely yes, I’m excited about doing that.”

Does this mean more Felurian and the Cthaeh? Sure sounds like it.

Rothfuss is coy about what role villains the Chandrian will play in The Doors of Stone, but at least hints that we’ll see more of them. “That would not be an unreasonable assumption. I mean, it’s kind of important to the overall story, right?” As for lesser villains, likens Kvothe’s University rival Ambrose will be back, with Rothfuss likening him to “a young Donald Trump,” although he admits that could be going a bit far.

And obviously, Kvote himself will be back, and possibly not in the best frame of mind. We have to find out how he becomes the broken bartender in the framing story, right? “Does Kvothe have post-traumatic stress? That I can answer definitively: yes,” Rothfuss said. “Kvothe is a mess psychologically.”

Fan Theories

And of course, Rothfuss entertained some fan theories. Did any hit the mark? Let’s see:

"QUESTION: “Is there a special property of Roah wood that allows it to trap the essence of a person or creature like how Jax traps part of the name of the Moon, or perhaps how Kvothe locks away part of his name in the thrice-locked chest.”ANSWER: “Yeah, that’s pretty tinfoil hat right there. I’m not saying that you’re wrong to be thinking along those lines because I sow breadcrumbs all through these books. I imply a lot and I leave it to you to put things together. I mean, I’ve heard weirder things but that is a little tinfoil hattish. But Roah comes up a lot, doesn’t it? Sure does. Is there something probably going on with that? Yeah. Are names important? Yep. Is there a thrice-locked chest? Yep.”"

Sounds pretty ominous, huh? Now we all need to do a reread and focus on every detail involving Roah wood…

One fan asked Rothfuss approximately how much time passes between the end of The Wise Man’s Fear and the beginning of The Doors of Stone. Apparently, we could be working with quite a wide time frame here. “Less than a hundred years, more than one year,” Rothfuss teases.

Fans also asked him about the potential reception of his book:

"QUESTION: “Is there a particular section you’re worried most about in terms of being received poorly by fans?”ANSWER: “That changes as time goes. Sometimes I get something squared away and then I get worried about another chapter or section.”"

And finally, just to keep us on our toes, he drops some fake Doors of Stone spoilers.” I don’t think I’ve mentioned that, like, Auri dies,” he joked. Not today, Rothfuss, not today.

After The Doors of Stone

“I want to get it done and have it be good, so that you all can experience the whole story,” Rothfuss said of The Doors of Stone. “I know how much to sucks to have two-thirds of a story. You can’t get what’s really going on until you get the whole thing.”

And hopefully, it’ll be over very soon. But what about after that? “[The Doors of Stone] is the final book of this series, and there will be more books set in the world,” Rothfuss said. How interesting.

Although he just seemed to be toying with the idea, Rothfuss is at least contemplating a prequel story. “I think it would be fun to do something about the creation war, which was so long ago, kind of back before the world broke, that time is kind of hard to measure meaningfully.”

Outside of Kingkiller questions, Rothfuss was asked what he thought of Game of Thrones season 8, which was famously divisive among fans. “Never saw it,” he said. “I never watched any Game of Thrones.”

That’s a shame, I would have liked his take! But I suppose there’s already an awful lot of opinion out there already.

So 2020 will pass without The Doors of Stone, but what about 2021? I like to think that Rothfuss is getting closer to finishing the book. Over the last few months, he has talked about it much more and we’re getting more answers.

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