Thursday 8 July 2010

Update on R. Scott Bakker's epic fantasy work

Scott Bakker has posted some news on The Aspect-Emperor, his second trilogy and the middle act of his massive Second Apocalypse mega-series.


The above cover is apparently just a placeholder and not the real deal. The final draft of The White-Luck Warrior has been turned in, with only some minor polishing left to do. According to an earlier post, the book is significantly longer than The Judging Eye, coming in at over 600 pages. The third book in the series, which previously had the working title The Horns of Golgotterath, has a new working title, The Unholy Consult, which I don't think is an improvement (also redundant, as we know that the Consult is Unholy, it's one of the core storyline points of the books). Bakker also seems more certain that the final sub-series of the three will be a duology, not another trilogy.

The White Luck Warrior is currently listed for release in April 2011 in both the USA and UK.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Is it really a placeholder or do you think all the negative comments on the web forced them to make a change?

Adam Whitehead said...

Placeholder. The previous book also had a very different image on the cover before they switched to something more in keeping with the previous books. I imagine this will be similar and the final image will match the respectivel UK and US formats for the previous four books.

Dave Cesarano said...

I thought Horns/Consult was book one of a new trilogy and the middle series was the duology.

Kinda glad the cover was a placeholder. It didn't really fit the art of the last four books, except as a cheap imitation.

Anonymous said...

I preferred the old title as well, but this one's quite good. As to whether "unholy" is redundant... well, yeah, but something tells me this is what they used to call the Inchies/Mangies back in the old day. The Unholy Consult. The first part got dropped over the year.

Anyway, enough fanboi wankery. Can't wait for the release :)

Adam Whitehead said...

ASPECT-EMPEROR and the final sub-series were originally supposed to be duologies, but Scott changed his mind in the writing of THE JUDGING EYE and turned the ASPECT-EMPEROR series into a trilogy, although it sounds like the final series will remain a duology.

Interestingly, Scott has also said that the PRINCE OF NOTHING is to THE ASPECT-EMPEROR what THE HOBBIT was to THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Interesting to see if WHITE LUCK WARRIOR makes that clearer, as JUDGING EYE was probably the 'quietest' book in the setting so far.

Anonymous said...

Fellowship was also a pretty quiet book, slow to start. You get the Ringwraiths' chase (Shire, Bree, Weathertop and finally right before Rivendell), the Watcher in the water/mines of the Moria and the final confrontation with the Uruks where Boromir bites it. Some silliness with trees and wights and Tom Bombadil as well and a wolf attack in the mountains, those are the major action bits in a pretty lengthy (longer than Judging Eye) part 1 of the trilogy.