Brandon Sanderson’s fifth Stormlight Archive book gets release date and title

We’re going back to Roshar next year! Tor Books, the publisher of Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive, gave us an exciting announcement yesterday: the title and release date for the fifth book in the series.

The Stormlight Archive book 5 will be titled Wind and Truth, and is slated to arrive on Friday, December 6, 2024.

Wind and Truth, the fifth Stormlight Archive book, is out next December!

A new Stormlight book is always a big deal, but this one is extra notable. It marks the end of the first arc of The Stormlight Archive, Sanderson’s magnum opus. After this book, there will be an in-world time jump before he eventually returns with five more books for the next phase of the series. Per Tor’s official description:

"The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive.Dalinar Kholin has challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions, and the Knights Radiant and the nations of Roshar have a mere 10 days to prepare for the worst. The fate of the entire world—and the Cosmere at large—hangs in the balance."

The stakes are high, and not just for the world of Roshar. As the description notes, this book will have ramifications for the entire Cosmere — that’s the fictional universe in which all of Sanderson’s adult fantasy stories, like Mistborn and Elantris, are set. We’ve seen some characters from other series crop up in The Stormlight Archive, and with the showdown between the Knights Radiant and Odium about to come to a head, it’s only going to get crazier.

Another interesting thing about Wind and Truth is the title. Originally, Sanderson was running with Knights of Wind and Truth as his working title for the book, so that it would fit in with the overarching poetic theme of the books. In the Stormlight world there exist holy poems called keteks which more or less form palindromes, reading the same forward and backward. Sanderson has worked hard to make the overall titles of Stormlight’s first arc also form a Ketek: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, Rhythm of War

So by that pattern, the fifth book would have needed to have to a title where the first letters of each word were KOWT, in order to match The Way of Kings. Sanderson addressed this in an update back in March, 2023, saying, “The working title of this book right now is some variation on Knights of Wind and Truth. I’ve been shortening that a lot to Wind and Truth in my mind as I write, so it’s possible I might just go with that as the cover title. If I do, the rest of you can know that in our hearts, the REAL title is Knights of Wind, Truth. That way, you can have your symmetrical title.”

Keteks aside, Wind and Truth definitely rolls off the tongue a bit easier. We also know that legendary fantasy and sci-fi book cover artist Michael Whelan will be lending his skills once more to the series for Wind and Truth. He hinted as much on Twitter/X following the release announcement.

Wind and Truth comes out on an unusual day of the week

The last thing to note about this announcement is that Wind and Truth releases on a Friday. For those who don’t obsessively follow book release schedules, it is typical for major publishers like Tor Books to release new titles in the US on Tuesdays and in the UK on Thursdays. Releasing a book on a different day of the week is no big deal if you’re an independent author who can self-publish whenever you please, but when it comes to traditional publishing houses, the entire ecosystem with bookstores revolves around those somewhat static days of the week. So this is unusual enough that I arched a brow in intrigue.

A bit of digging turned up the reason why Wind and Truth is dropping on an odd day of the week: so that it aligns with Sanderson’s 2024 Dragonsteel convention, which is the Sanderson-focused con that his company runs. The video below is timestamped to begin where Sanderson talks about it at this year’s Dragonsteel convention:

"In the past I was able to get away with doing my release parties [at Dragonsteel] on a weekend, which is much easier for everyone. Well, I got so big and sort of popular that the publisher said please don’t do this, you’re releasing the books too early…if you do your release party [before the release date] and no one else can sell the book, it looks bad. And I can understand that [if] you’re a bookseller, you don’t want me selling my book before you guys can sell the book.So I said to them, this last year I’m even bigger and more powerful now. How about we just decide to release the book on the weekend instead of on a Tuesday. So Dragonsteel 2024 is a Thursday, Friday, Saturday convention…and we will be releasing Stormlight 5 to you at the end of that. And it’ll go live for everybody else that night at midnight as the convention ends."

When you’re Brandon Sanderson, you can make your own rules!

With Wind and Truth just under a year away, it’s a great time for a re-read of the series, or the Cosmere at large. Who knows what tidbits from other Cosmere worlds might show up in the fifth Stormlight Archive novel!

Wind and Truth will be in bookstores on Friday, December 6, 2024.

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