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See the original image at dragonmount.com —

Author chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series

dragonmount.com — Tor announces that the final novel in bestselling Robert Jordan ’s legendary Wheel of Time® fantasy series will be completed by author Brandon Sanderson.

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  • kingcorran, on 12/11/2007, -0/+16I'm very excited. Wonderful news - this is a work that deserves to be completed, and while I'm glad Sanderson acknowledges that it's a heavy burden, he (working with Harriet as his editor) sounds like the best guy for the job that anyone could imagine, aside from Robert Jordan himself.
    • JavertHolmes, on 12/11/2007, -0/+31Upon hearing the news, Sanderson nervously tugged his braid.
      • divrekku, on 12/11/2007, -0/+19And crossed his arms underneath his breasts. And sniffed.
  • laddr, on 12/11/2007, -0/+6Here is a GREAT interview with him shortly before the public announcement. Gives me a fair amount of faith that he is going to do this as right as possible: http://www.dragonmount.com/Books/Memory_of_Light/b ...

    Time to pick up a couple of his books while I wait for 2009
  • barktwiggs, on 12/11/2007, -0/+12Any bets on how many pages it will be? I'm saying:1,442.
    • ttfadia, on 12/11/2007, -1/+6Luckily, you'll be just fine if you read the last 10.
      • l1wulf, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Indeed, what great practice. Normally I reread a series when a new book comes out... Yeah, screw that. Actually, most readers of this genre will be just fine as mega novels seem to have become the norm, as well as the death of the trilogy in lieu of much larger series.
        • fluoro, on 12/11/2007, -1/+1I'll gladly reread George R R Martin's books again. They're really, really well-written and are a joy to read. I hate to say, but the last few WoT books have felt more like a chore to read. It's frustrating to get through a giant book like this and feel like the plot hasn't advanced in the slightest. But I keep buying them when the new ones come out anyway. :/
  • pimpbot1979, on 12/11/2007, -21/+11Related story: Peter Jackson finishes a wheel of cheese.
    • onionoino, on 12/11/2007, -3/+3shut up, he has lost a lot of weight.
  • halo6819, on 12/11/2007, -1/+25Dragon Mount: Who killed Asmodean? Come on, just tell us. Please. I won't tell Harriet you told me.

    Brandon: Okay, okay. You've got a right to know. I'll tell just you.

    It was Bela.

    this guy gets WoT
  • reversekilled, on 12/11/2007, -27/+8If Robert Jordan's death didn't end the Wheel of Time series, then what was the point of his death??
    • insonh, on 12/11/2007, -7/+2HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..................good one

      i started reading this series and ended it after the 5th book. it just kept dragging on and on and on and on
    • Bahroturn, on 12/11/2007, -6/+1This post actually made me laugh. Good Job. Anytime I check the comments I immediately go to the posts that have less than negative 10. Those are the real gems and rarely seem to disappoint.
  • 1tb0y, on 12/11/2007, -18/+3The most disturbing comment I've seen about this announcement was that some reader started reading the WoT books in 9th grade and is now a college professor. God help us if Robert Jordan is influencing future college-professors have grown up reading.
  • Kinsbane, on 12/11/2007, -3/+19As long as the final book isn't 1,500 pages describing women's clothing and jewelry and hair and the noises they all make when the women move, Brandon should have a good time writing an excellent novel.
    • vawksel, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3I did hear the book is a little wordy and he takes too long to build the characters. Sounds like your opinion is the same.
    • cusoman, on 12/11/2007, -0/+6*tugs on Nynaeve's braid*
    • Gryffydd, on 12/11/2007, -2/+8You know, I love the WOT series, and I've read books 1-9 about 3 or 4 times.....but MAN IT GETS ANNOYING. The braid tugging, Perrin is slow and careful bause.....WE GET IT. It's a great story, but the last 4 books or so really took a nose dive.
      • gaucho4, on 12/13/2007, -0/+210-11 start picking the story up again. I though 11 was more like the earlier novels.
    • jaredog, on 12/11/2007, -2/+2I stopped reading halfway through Book 10. I just couldn't take it anymore. It got so mind-numbing and boring.
      • fluoro, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3I always want to stop. Each time I read one I say it'll be my last one. But then the next one comes out and I buy it. It's like literary crack or something. It's bad, it's bad for you, you're kind of embarrassed to tell anyone you're still doing it after all this time, you waste too much money on it. But somehow you keep doing it.
  • theclansman, on 12/11/2007, -0/+8I started reading them in grade 7, great books but I always had this theory that robert couldn't finish the books because he didn't know how...I mean, he had so many little side-stories to finish and prophecies to fulfill and then how do you actually top some of the battle's in the first 5 books?..anyways, hopefully this guy can do the job!
  • GreyICE, on 12/11/2007, -3/+24I wonder if he can truly duplicate Jordan's hilariously awkward character relationships. It just wouldn't be the Wheel of Time if men and women could interact like normal adults. I don't think I could truly get behind this book if the characters were three dimensional.

    Fortunately I see he won an award from some sort of romance writers magazine, so that tragedy is probably averted.
    • umrgregg, on 12/11/2007, -0/+6I wish I could hug you through my browser.
  • tsos2, on 12/11/2007, -1/+5I had no idea he had passed. I guess I need to pay attention to the MSM a little more.
    • farksucksmasack, on 12/11/2007, -0/+10Actually, no. You don't. In fact, I don't remember hearing a single thing about his death from MSM. Got it all here on the web.
    • mrjit, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2It's been all over digg/web/etc.
  • Billiam627, on 12/11/2007, -1/+5I just hope he can get the battle scenes right. Any good writer can write fantasy, but RJ had an amazing sense of battle, having been to Vietnam himself...
  • insonh, on 12/11/2007, -11/+6i was finished with "The Wheel of Time" after the 5th book.
    • metallikop, on 12/11/2007, -3/+5Then you missed out, the back 5 were great... just moved really really slowly.
      • insonh, on 12/11/2007, -4/+5i started reading this series in 1990, its been alsomt 18 years and its still not finished. sorry but it got too long and boring. Jordan didnt understand that all good stories need an ending anything else is just jumping the shark.
        • feebie, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3I'm on book 9. It's really slow, but it isn't bad. It's just very very saturated with the development of character personality and traits...which can be draining to read. But I'm still liking the story a lot.
      • fluoro, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1I already forgot which one, because I'm losing track.. but one of the last books just felt like from front to end, it made no significant plot advances at all.
        • irriadin, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1Probably Crossroads of Twilight. I'll admit, it wasn't too great as a stand-alone novel, but when you view it as the "calm before the storm," as it were, it seems a bit more... forgivable. Knife of Dreams cranked the intensity up considerably.
  • coyo7e, on 12/11/2007, -2/+13Oh god, another 12 books.. /facepalm
  • murf43143, on 12/11/2007, -2/+1DUGG.
  • daivos, on 12/11/2007, -1/+8Not to spoil it for anyone, but here is the mysterious ending everyone is so concerned about:
    "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of time. But it was an ending."
  • Tyrghast, on 12/11/2007, -13/+5These books are so poorly handled... they just go on and on without any real character development or even surprising plot elements. They are simply boring, nothing like George R.R. Martin's books.
    • dasugo, on 12/11/2007, -3/+2LOL. of ALL the writers u had to chose. U used George R Martin as an example. I never could get into the Game of thrones.. it dragged ON and ON and ON. At least Wheel of time had like 5 exciting books intially before the great slow down. George's books just start.... SLOW. I know i know, keep reading it gets better. I have heard that from my lil book group. I guess I am an actio junkie. the Codex Alera by Jim butcher is the right knid of porridge for me.

      Don't mind me though. Since the final one will be released by 2009... I will start from scratch again and reread til it is TIme.
      • mrgreen4242, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1I agree... Martin's books moved soooo slowly. WoT was verbose, for lack of a better word, but at least it was engaging. You wanted to read through page after page of irrelevant detail so you could find out what happens in the story. I gave up on Martin's series about halfway through the first book.
      • fluoro, on 12/11/2007, -1/+1OMG, I can't believe what I'm reading. I loved WoT when I first started the series, and then I became really bored with it the last few books (although I continued to read it). But when I started reading George R R Martin I instantly thought, "Holy *****.. this is amazing!" And I still think so. The writing is so fantastic. The plot is well-written, well thought out, the character development is good. The character development doesn't go down into the microscopic details that Robert Jordan does, but quite frankly I think that's what's good about it. WoT has very static characters; there is great detail into them, but they never really evolve or change. Even Rand al'Thor doesn't seem all that drastically different now than he did in the beginning to me. Sure there are some differences, but he basically seems unchanged. There is real psychological evolution in Song of Ice and Fire. You can see the innocence of the kids in the first book transform as all kinds of horrible things happen to them, and it's emotionally engaging to the reader I think. And you can see that some people who seem great at first later reveal themselves to be terrible people. It's not all spelled out for you at once. In WoT, you get a sense of what Morraine is like up front, and that never really changes. But in Song of Ice and Fire, you see Jaime in so many ways already. He started out as the guy who tried to kill one of the main characters and was obviously not an honorable knight, and now through various things that have happened he has become seemingly the exact opposite.
        I just can't understand how you don't consider Martin's books engaging. I'm truly stunned by this. :)
    • daivos, on 12/11/2007, -1/+1Winter is coming.
    • mrjit, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1The first few books were fantastic, after 4-5 it just died.
  • sensoukami, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5Oh good. Bad writer or good writer, I just want to see the plot points finished up according to RJ's plan....give it to me in note form if needs be.
  • Pegritz, on 12/11/2007, -10/+7I read the first Wheel of Time book when I was in *high school*, back in 1990....In 1996, I bought the first five books again, thinking that that was the entire series. But...it just kept going on and on and on and on and on.
    The Wheel of Time is not "epic" fantasy, it's a disgustingly bloated, over-written, over-extended, hypertrophied collision of every single fantasy trope developed since The Lord of the Rings.
  • wendelgee2, on 12/11/2007, -1/+4I figured they would tap George R. R. Martin. Anything to help him procrastinate on the next Song of Fire and Ice installment that is already 2 years late.
    • 1tb0y, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Just like quality software, good books are never late, but refined.
    • ryodoan, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4yeah, I dont care if he delays it another 2 years as long as its better than the turd he dropped off in his previous book.

      / ok, so it was not THAT bad, but seriously, nothing happened in it. I spent every chapter waiting for the book to begin and then I was flipping the last page wondering where the hell the rest of the book went.
      • GreyICE, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2It did seriously read like an 800 page prologue. Or maybe some sort of intermission. I know the point was that a lot of the big events have happened and that we're hitting a lull in the flow - that its not a nonstop action movie, but a realistically paced epic. I just wish that he could, I dunno, make it more interesting. I think he wants to wait for some of his characters (namely the Starks) to mature (or possibly the Dragons), but it ended up feeling like a Naruto filler episode.
    • fluoro, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1I'm happy to let GRRM take his time on the next installment of Ice and Fire so long as he continues to give us the same high quality. Actually, A Dance with Dragons is not far behind at the moment supposedly. Most of it is content that was originally intended for FEAST, but the book was getting too long. At this point in the story there are essentially two major plotlines going in parallel, so what he and the publisher decided was to split the two plotlines from FEAST into two basically parallel books, FEAST and DANCE. And as of the time he released FEAST, he said quite a bit of DANCE was basically done but needed some re-organization.
    • irriadin, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1I have a feeling TOR told Harriet (RJ's wife, who made this decision) to stay within TOR. GRRM's publisher is Bantam, and choosing him would have probably merited a considerable amount of consternation between Bantam and TOR.
  • Godel, on 12/11/2007, -1/+7It can't possibly be worse than Kevin J. Anderson finishing the Dune Series.
    • onionoino, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1His Jedi Academy trilogy was pretty crappy.
    • gaucho4, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1I've purposely avoided the Anderson Dune novels. Good author but he probably should have left Dune alone.
  • melonhedd, on 12/11/2007, -9/+1Darn, I had hoped I would never have to see another Wheel of Time book again
  • threepio, on 12/11/2007, -11/+5Dear Brandon,
    Wrap it the ***** up already.
    Sincerely,
    The rest of us.
  • HolyJaw, on 12/11/2007, -0/+10Kevin J. Anderson didn't finish Dune AFAIR, Brian Herbert (Frank's son, did) and then collaborated with KJA two make two prequel trilogies and one other.

    In regards to WoT, it kind of sucks that I started reading these books about one month before RJ's death. These would have been great to kill time in high school, but I guess college is as good a time to start as any.

    To all the nay - sayers who think RJ's stories are over bloated, etc etc, well that's the point. That's why his fans love him. I personally love the way he goes on and on but in a way that holds my interest and leaves me wanting more. If i wanted a short epic fantasy I would pick up (for the 10th time) my entire series of Belgariad/Mallorean by David/Leigh Eddings. Those are amazing books, but easy to read in a week or two.

    But RJ's? Months, man, months.

    RIP RJ, and I can't wait to see the finished product. (The interview also mentions RJ may or may not have actually already written the last chapter... a good place for Sanderson to be, doing the middle instead of the end.)
  • kdoig, on 12/11/2007, -3/+1Dugg for accuracy.
    • daivos, on 12/11/2007, -1/+0Buried for being a valueless comment.
      • divrekku, on 12/11/2007, -1/+3Replied. Because I'm apathetic towards your comment.
  • GreatSunJester, on 12/11/2007, -7/+0and "As the Wheel of Time Turns" continues -- a text based soap opera soon to be longer that any tripe laid down by L Ron Hubbard. Oh, I did read the first few books, but the overal storyline lost me like something from Piers Anthony does after a book or so.
  • mrjit, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Man I wouldn't go NEAR writing this book. Talk about trial-by-fire for his career. Has anyone read Brandons previous books? I only see 2-3 listed under his credits, none of which I've heard of.
    • mrgreen4242, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Ya, I was thinking that... he would have been better off accepting it as a ghost writer job and just slapping Robert Jordon's name on the book. If it was good, everyone ion the industry would know who wrote it and he'd get the rewards of success ("New book by the author who ghost wrote the final WoT novel!") but if it flopped at least he'd be a little insulated from the fallout.
  • kidtwist, on 12/11/2007, -3/+9How about if Sanderson just starts at book 5 and writes the to the end? We can just pretend that books Jordan wrote from 5 on don't exist.
    • irriadin, on 12/12/2007, -0/+2I don't get why people don't like Lord of Chaos. Crown of Swords and Path of Daggers, I can understand being less liked, but not LoC...
      • gaucho4, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1Path of Daggers just about bored me to tears. Lord of Chaos was OK but had too much time devoted to politics. I actually liked Crown of Swords because it was a bit different from the other books. Not one of my favorites, but it was still pretty good. I think Knife of Dreams was the best of the "post-Book 4" novels.
  • bry5an, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4i had always joked with my friends that he'd pass away before he finished it...
    i'm speechless now that it's happened.. =(
  • reversekilled, on 12/11/2007, -13/+3If Robert Jordan's death didn't end the Wheel of Time series, then what was the point of his death??
    • warcin, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1It was a bad and unnecessary comment the first time you wrote it, it did not need to be said twice
  • LuckyJack, on 12/11/2007, -2/+8Wow... what's with the prevailing cynicism? Seriously, I get that the interwebs is the land of divisiveness - that you're somehow not cool unless you're tearing something down - but why come into a forum that contains the best news that fans have had since Jordan's death, and rip the series to pieces?

    Yeah, we get it, he had a fetish for what clothes looked like or braid-tugging or dress-smoothing... and you know what, it bugged some of us, too. But so effing what? You didn't like it, cool. Not everyone likes everything, and how boring would it be, but a man's life work is going to be finished. That, at least, should be worth something.
    • Jube89, on 01/04/2008, -0/+0It's worth much to people who can see past themselves long enough to appreciate it...
  • Wisgary, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3Holy *****, this just shocked me into remembering the PC game, I completely forgot about it, played it when I was a kid, I kinda liked it.
    • irriadin, on 12/12/2007, -0/+2I kinda liked it too, apart from the Trollocs doing backflips Matrix-style to avoid your attacks...
  • clearzen, on 12/11/2007, -1/+2I didn't even now RJ was dead until I saw this on slashdot. Anyway, I've been waiting for the final book in this series for a long time. A lot of people criticize Robert Jordan for being overly descriptive or detailed in his writing. While I will give you the fact he does use filler prose, his descriptive writing style is no more lengthy than Steven Kings'.
    • timshead, on 12/11/2007, -3/+1As a huge fan of both Stephen King and Robert Jordan, I can say that your statement is without any merit. You're saying that he uses a lot of words and so does Stephen King. And??? Both Hemingway and Franklin W. Dixon, in their own special way, wrote sparingly. (Yeah, I know Franklin W. Dixon was a pen name for multiple writers, but I'm trying to make a point). Bone Thugs and Harmony and Led Zeppelin use lots of notes. The length of writing does not determine the quality of writing, and Stephen King, from a literary perspective, is ten times the writer that Robert Jordan was. Does that mean I enjoy his books any more? No. But I do appreciate his writing style far more than Jordan's.


      • Tyrghast, on 12/11/2007, -1/+2right so now "***** this ***** that fuk ***** fook" (a la Stephen King) is writing STYLE?
  • onionoino, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5Every stop knocking his books, the first 5 were incredible. The great hunt was unbelievably intense at the end, i had never gotten that same thrill from reading a book before. And sure the last few dragged on a bit too long, but since the world that Jordan created was so rich and detailed i honestly didn't mind more detail. I found it just made his universe much more vivid.
  • pazimzadeh, on 12/11/2007, -4/+1I wish Terry Goodkind was chosen.
    • grantmoore3d, on 12/12/2007, -1/+1I love his books, but it wouldn't fit with the series. He writes books...far too well.
  • feebie, on 12/11/2007, -0/+6Even though WoT is long and excruciating to read at times, I think it's a charming story. And if you can bear having to read through extensive paragraphs talking about scroll-worked cloaks and braid-tugging...it's not a bad book at all. It's just...extremely descriptive.
    I read it over a much longer period of time than with other books, and I find that the abundance of descriptive writing helps me remember things better when I come back to it after not reading it for a few weeks.
  • phildixon, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4If "finishing the series" includes Brandon Sanderson having to read the entire series again, I hope that Brandon is very young or there may have to be a third person brought in to "finish the series".
  • Topher06, on 12/11/2007, -5/+4As much as I am sorry that Robert Jordan had to die from cancer, I have to say that his series of books became unreadable about 4 volumes back. I don't think it was a problem with his writing, I think this is a problem with Tor Fantasy. Any responsible or credible editor should have reigned Jordan in and forced him to cut back on the complexity and breadth of his Wheel of Time series. It might have meant releasing less books but in the end it would have resulted in a much tighter series that could have been one of the best fantasy series of all times. Instead Tor Fantasy was greedy and just saw dollar signs on every page Robert Jordan wrote, and the more books he wrote the more money Tor Fantasy knew they could rake in.
    The truth will be known if this new author will actually finish the series in one book or if Tor Fantasy gets him to continue the saga indefinitely so they can bank more money off of Jordan's creation. If Tor Fantasy is only in it for the money I can see this series lasting another 12 volumes, or result in multiple spin offs using the same IP, all in the name of continuing Robert Jordan's "vision". I know its a business, but at some point you draw a line between credibility and greed, and Tor Fantasy has stepped over that line long ago. The same thing is happening with Terry Goodkind. Good series at first, but starting to meander down a path of cheesy daytime soap opera quality.
    • Robopath, on 12/11/2007, -1/+4"Any responsible or credible editor should have reigned Jordan in and forced him to cut back on the complexity and breadth of his Wheel of Time series."
      Harriet McDougal his WIFE was the editor....

      Brandon Sanderson was hand picked by his wife and family to finish this Magnum Opus...
      At least know what your talking about when you comment on it. You have no concept of or appreciation for a truly Epic Fantasy.
    • muxaulo, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3I both agree and disagree with your comments. The first 4 books were outstanding, definite beginning, middle and end stuff with the subsequent books seeming to drag on a bit. But a true epic it is, it is with gladness that I will be able to finish the series off (unless I die :)) and get closure on it.
      Otherwise I do recommend the Steven Erikson epic: A Tale of the Malazan, Book of the Fallen. These 10 books, 7 being released so far, are non-stop and the action and battle sequences are amazing, do your self a favour and check them out, the first in the series is titled, Gardens of the Moon.
    • Thuktun, on 12/12/2007, -0/+3"As much as I am sorry that Robert Jordan had to die from cancer [...]"

      Sorry, try again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_amyloidosis
  • Cathartik, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3Best news I've heard all week.
  • buff01, on 12/12/2007, -4/+2The Wheel of Time series is horrible. Just bad. (yes, I read the first two books) So it doesn't matter much if it's finished, or who by.

    Now if George R.R. Martin kicks the bucket, I might shed some tears... that is a series that is demanding some closure!
    • Thuktun, on 12/12/2007, -0/+2"The Wheel of Time series is horrible. Just bad."

      In your opinion. Many disagree with you.

      Enjoy not reading the finale, then.
  • frozeneskimo, on 12/12/2007, -0/+0YAY! Finally. I
    • frozeneskimo, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1Wow I don't know what happened...anyway. I've been waiting for this for a long time! I'm so glad they finally picked someone to write it.
  • malbadon, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1All that matters is that Harriet is editing the 12th volume. She has been the secret force of consistency in Jordans meandering style. She could turn a grade 12 book review into a Jordan-esque novel.
  • grantmoore3d, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1I love his books and can't wait for them to finish... however, I will agree that they started to get a little long winded towards the last few. I just couldn't understand how the story was progressing, it seems like everyone was just fighting everyone for no reason, and the amount of characters was staggering.
    Also, I would like to recommend Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series... those are brilliant. If you like WOT, I'm sure you'd get into those as well.
  • jayscot, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1WooT!!!
  • km249, on 12/12/2007, -0/+3I started WoT in high school and got through 6 or 7 before I got frustrated with not having the next one available and decided to wait until the entire series was finished so I could read them all from start to finish. Incredibly sad that RJ didn't make it, but I have full confidence in Brandon Sanderson's ability to do this. I happened upon his first book, Elantris, when I was waiting in line at the first (and last) Harry Potter midnight release party thingy I ever went to at the local bookstore. It was great, and his current series, Mistborn, is even better. His books have an element of novelty that so many lack these days. His writing is far from the Tolkien cloning that I've gotten frustrated with from other authors. In my opinion he has enough imagination and SciFi geekiness (it's a good thing) to be able to really immerse himself in the WoT world and get the job done right. Good luck Brandon!
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