Patrick Rothfuss drops more details about The Doors of Stone

Fans of The Kingkiller Chronicle are still waiting for The Doors of Stone to be published. Thankfully, author Patrick Rothfuss is happy to answer their questions.

Fans of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle are still waiting to get their hands on the much-anticipated third book in the trilogy, The Doors of Stone. At this point, they’ve been waiting a full decade since The Wise Man’s Fear was released in 2011. A few fans have lost all hope, with even Rothfuss’ editor saying she’s “never seen a word” of the book.

But while the book still has no release date, Rothfuss is happy to answer fan questions on his Twitch, which he also uses to play games (sometimes with his kids) and spread the word about his Worldbuilders charity! Does he worry about fan expectations? How does he go about building the world of Temerant?much of the University will be in book 3? He answers all of that and more in a new Q&A! Watch below, and then we’ll take a tour of some of the more interesting answers.

Fan expectations

Many fans are getting bored waiting year after year for The Doors of Stone. And as much as it irritates fans that Rothfuss isn’t done yet, it irritates the author just as much. Furthermore, when it does release, he worries about it not living up to expectations. “That’s the thing that keeps me awake at night,” he said. “Literally, I wake up having fear about that. It is rough. I do feel that.”

However, he feels much better about his writing this year than he did in 2020. “Part of that is probably due to work and part of it due to the fact that mentally I’m in a lot better a space than I was a year ago. Last year I was not in a good place.”

His writing process

Before we get to Book 3 details, Rothfuss also talked a bit about the process of creating the world of Temerant, where there’s a lot more going on than just Kvothe’s journey. Rothfuss explained what he was aiming for when he created his epic fantasy world:

"It is a realistic feeling world where all of the different elements of it, I have thought of their potential long-term consequences in terms of impact to culture and technology."

The Doors of Stone details

Sometimes, when Rothfuss talks about The Doors of Stone, you have to differentiate what are real details from what he’s jokingly made up on the spot. I appreciate why he does this. Some questions are too integral to the plot for him to just give away on Twitch.

Still, he teases a fair amount of what’s to come. When asked whether there will be a new form of magic involved in book 3, he seemed to heavily imply there is something new coming. “Oh, absolutely. 100%,” he said. This might be time to start guessing.

Next, he reveals just how much time The Doors of Stone will spend at the University, which was probably the most important location in both The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear. “More than 20%, less than 50%,” Rothfuss said.

Finally, he talks about whether Skarpi, the old storyteller from Tarbean, will be present in the third book. “That would not be an unreasonable to think,” he said.

Patrick Rothfuss has some fun

And now for some of the more unrealistic things Rothfuss had to say. I wouldn’t expect these to actually show up in the book:

• Is Auri trapped in the thrice-locked chest? “You can’t really call it ‘living,’ it’s a very small chest. She’s in there, but she can’t move at all. It’s so sad.”
• How about the Cthaeh? Will it be involved? “Elodin is secretly the Cthaeh.” To be fair, if we’re joking about plot points, the more I think about this, the more this could be true. Maybe.

To top it all off, Rothfuss answered a fan wondering if Kvothe will attend a funeral at any point in his journey.

"It’s not so much a funeral. It’s more of a series of funerals. I mean, because everyone dies. It’s just a big pit. It’s just a big limepit and everyone you love is thrown into it. And then Kvothe stands there, and then right at the end Ambrose comes up behind him and stabs him and pushes him in then that’s the end. The thing that’s taken so long is trying to get all the deaths in the right order."

The end!

Maybe one day Rothfuss will read an excerpt of The Doors of Stone live on stream. “I might… in support of the Worldbuilders fundraiser. Just saying.” If that isn’t an incentive to support Worldbuilders, which does great work anyway, then I don’t know what is.

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