What is it with major fantasy authors seemingly being unable to complete the next books in their beloved series? George R.R. Martin has been working on The Winds of Winter, the next book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, for 14 years. Patrick Rothfuss has been writing The Doors of Stone, the third book in his Kingkiller Chronicle series, for just as long.
Meanwhile, in that time, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has released well over 10 novels and lots of short fiction besides; his latest book, Wind and Truth, is one of his most ambitious yet. While Martin and Rothfuss have developed reputations for writing so slowly you wonder if they're doing anything at all, Sanderson is like a machine gun that fires books.
Sanderson also teaches classes on writing at Brigham Young University, some of which get uploaded to his YouTube channel. In a recent video, "Plot Theory: Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #3," he made an errant comment about Rothfuss' continued work on The Doors of Stone. At least accocrding to Sanderson, it's still coming:
In this clip, Sanderson is talking about how some stories are structured like Greek tragedies, where a character's fatal flaw is eventually their undoing. He thinks that's the direction in which Rothfuss is taking Kvothe, the brilliant young student of magic whose story began in The Name of the Wind (2007) and continued in The Wise Man's Fear (2011). Purportedly, The Doors of Stone will close out this trilogy, but we seem no closer to reading it than we were a decade ago.
“I’m on record multiple times saying I think this is the structure that Pat Rothfuss is going to use when he’s writing The Name Of The Wind trilogy, if we ever get the third one, which I'm confident we will," Sanderson said. "I know Pat. No one wants that book to get done more than him, I believe I’ve said that one before. But I believe this is a classic Greek tragedy: a tragic flaw in a character that [is] highlighted over and over during the road of trials that they refuse to let go of to the point where it causes disaster."
Is Sanderson right that we'll eventually get to read The Doors of Stone? We'll have to wait and see. There was a flap back in 2023 where Rothfuss was going to release a chapter from the new book for charity, but it didn't happen. He did release The Narrow Road Between Desires, an expanded version of a short story set in the Kingkiller universe, a couple years ago.
So we watch and wait. At least we can depend on Sanderson to write dozens of books in the meantime.
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h/t Fandom Pulse