Behold the gorgeous cover for Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson's fifth Stormlight Archive novel

It's an important day for the Cosmere: the cover artwork for Wind and Truth, the fifth book in Brandon Sanderson's sweeping epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive, has been revealed. Sanderson writes books like a machine, but even by his prolific standards, this is a special one. The Stormlight Archive is the biggest, most ambitious series in Sanderson's fictional universe known as the Cosmere, of a scale and scope that rivals any of the great fantasy epics.

The Stormlight Archive is planned to be 10 books long, with a time jump occurring in the middle of the series as Sanderson takes some time away from it to focus on other works like Mistborn Era 3 and the long-awaited sequel to his debut novel Elantris. Wind and Truth is the fifth book out of the 10, and will serve as the climax to the first arc of The Stormlight Archive.

So yeah. This one is a big deal for Sanderson readers. And now, without further adieu, feast your eyes on the cover for Wind and Truth:

Wind and Truth is the last cover artist Michael Whelan will create for The Stormlight Archive

This cover sees Dalinar Kholin standing atop the tower of Urithiru, facing the horizon as the deadly Everstorm sweeps toward him. It's very much in line with the covers for the rest of The Stormlight Archive books, and I'm already getting excited imagining what it'll look like on a shelf next to the first four books in the series.

If the book wasn't already notable enough, it's also been revealed that this is the last cover that renowned artist Michael Whelan will create for the series. Whelan has been making cover artwork for fantasy and science fiction books since the 1970s, when his covers graced the works of authors like Anne McCaffrey, Stephen King, and even Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambley, the very book that turned Sanderson into a lifelong reader of the genre and subsequently a writer of it.

A fantastic interview with Michael Whelan went up today on the website for Sanderson's company Dragonsteel, which provides a look into the creation of the collaboration between artist and author which has been at the heart of The Stormlight Archive since the first volume, The Way of Kings, released in 2010. Now, with Wind and Truth, Whelan is not only retiring from working on Sanderson's series, but the book cover world at large as he focuses more on his own personal creative works.

"Though it’s been a good run for the past 50 years, I’m looking forward to being free from the deadline-to-deadline existence that has dominated my working life," Whelan said. "I feel fortunate that I can close up my commissioned oeuvre with a work for such a popular and well-respected author. (Nevertheless, going by past experience, some of my subsequent personal work will likely appear on book covers where feasible—but they won’t be tailor-made for any specific book.)"

It's hard to imagine what future books of The Stormlight Archive will look like without Whelan; I can't imagine bigger shoes to fill than his. It's an exciting new frontier for the series! If you're at all interested in the behind-the-scenes info for how the iconic book covers for The Stormlight Archive were made, the full interview with Whelan is very much worth a read.

Wind and Truth releases on December 6 from Tor Books. If you want to get a head start, Reactor is running a readalong of new chapters from the book for the next few months until it releases.

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