Last month, fantasy author Joe Abercrombie released his new book The Devils, about a misfit group of monsters who have to escort a street thief with a secret destiny across a war-torn alternate history Europe, replete with elves, pirates, covetous nobles, fanatics and demented magicians, all the behest of a child pope who wants to secure the throne of Troy. It's a ripper of a book, and it's landing really well with readers. The Devils debuted a number 1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list in the UK and number 5 on the New York Times bestseller list, both career highs for Abercrombie. This week it was announced that none other than director James Cameron of Avatar, Terminator, Titanic, and Aliens fame has purchased the book for adaptation, and will be co-writing a script with Abercrombie. Suffice to say, The Devils has been making some serious waves.
Abercrombie hasn't been resting on his laurels while all this has been going on, either. In May he did a book tour across the UK and U.S., meeting fans and building hype for The Devils. In the United States, he did nine tour stops over 12 days, each of which saw him in conversation with other notable authors in the fantasy space. In Albuqurque he spoke with George R.R. Martin; in Salt Lake City, he hung out with Brandon Sanderson; and in Seattle he had a discussion with Robin Hobb in front of more than 600 people. These events were packed.
One of the authors who took part in Abercrombie's tour was Patrick Rothfuss, the author of The Kingkiller Chronicle. Rothfuss has been working on the third and final volume in his trilogy, The Doors of Stone, since 2011, when the previous volume The Wise Man's Fear hit shelves. Along with George R.R. Martin, his name is pretty much synonymous with the idea of waiting an indeterminate amount of time for a perpetually delayed book.
At times, Rothfuss has seemed just as frustrated as the rest of us with the delays, and has been pretty open about some of the personal struggles he's gone through in the intervening years. Because of this, it's pretty notable whenever the fairly reclusive author comes out to do events like this. And lo! He did mention The Doors of Stone during this event, though it was mostly just to take a light-hearted stance on how work on it was going.
According to one fan in attendance, Rothfuss jokingly called The Doors of Stone a "bloated, unpublishable" book. Other fans talked about how nice it was to see Rothfuss out doing events again, even if he didn't provide any sort of substantial updates on Book 3. And of course, many others took to Reddit threads to rag on Rothfuss, as they do whenever he says anything about anything. Personally, I think it's pretty reasonable he didn't give any major updates for The Doors of Stone here; this tour was for Joe Abercrombie, not Patrick Rothfuss. It would have been kind of weird for Rothfuss to try and steal Abercombie's thunder at the event with some kind of announcement. Instead, he stuck to "mostly just telling stories and jokes."
It's been almost two years since the release of The Narrow Road Between Desires
All that said, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about how things were going for Rothfuss and his writing. The last book he released, The Narrow Road Between Desires, came out in late 2023. It was a novella that expanded the author's 2014 piece of short fiction The Lightning Tree into a proper standalone story, centered around Kvothe's fae companion Bast. I enjoyed the book, though I don't blame anyone who was disappointed that it wasn't a more substantial entry in the saga. And I have theories about why Rothfuss released this book when he did, which have more to do with business than necessarily satiating readers.
Rothfuss hasn't updated his blog since the book's release, and this event marks one of the few times anything about him doing a public event has made its way online in that year and a half. I've long since given up on predicting how progress is going on The Doors of Stone, but it's encouraging to see him out and about. And hey, talking about a "bloated" book makes me think he has too much material, rather than too little. Maybe he needs to trim it down for publication, rather than write a bajillion words more?
But that's just speculation. We'll know more about The Doors of Stone whenever Patrick Rothfuss tells us about it. In the meantime, authors like Joe Abercrombie will continue churning out books that satisfy fans. If you want to see photos and more from Abercrombie's tour, head over to his blog report on how it all went.
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h/t Marca