Details on THE WHEEL OF TIME COMPANION

 
At Worldcon I had the pleasure of moderating a panel featuring Harriet McDougal (Robert Jordan's widow), Maria Simons (one of his assistants) and fantasy authors Wesley Chu and Peter Brett, who spoke about the influence of Wheel of Time on their works. However, there was a fair amount of discussion by Harriet about the new companion volume to the series. This can be summed up as follows:

• The Wheel of Time Encyclopedia is dead! Long live The Wheel of Time Companion as it will now officially be called.
• The book will be 350,000 words long (comparable to several of the novels in the series; the longest, The Shadow Rising, is 389,000 words).
• The book will feature a lot of new artwork, arranged by Irene Gallo at Tor.
• Publication date likely to be November 2015.
• The book will feature all of the already-published maps and also some new ones, including one of Thakan'dar.
• The book will have a large vocabulary of the Old Tongue, with a minimum of 1,000 words.
• The book will feature character profiles and sketches for almost every character in the series. Even Bela has her own entry.
• The book will be written from a post-AMoL POV. It will have spoilers for the entire series.

In addition to info on the world book, Harriet revealed some more details generally about the series:

• The series is finished and done. Tor offered a lot of money and tried to persuade Harriet into doing more, but Harriet put her foot down and said no. The Wheel of Time ends with A Memory of Light and the companion volume.
• There were several unfulfilled contracts when Robert Jordan passed away, including for the Seanchan trilogy. Apparently the money involved was massive, worth many times the value of Harriet's house. Tor worked with the estate to re-write the contracts to substitute the companion book instead.
• Robert Jordan wrote one line about the planned Seanchan trilogy: Mat Cauthon playing dice in a grubby alleyway in Ebou Dar (not verbatim). That was it.
• Harriet named about 75% of the chapters in the series.
• Harriet vocally re-enacted Bela's death-whinny from AMoL.
• The panel spent an intense five minutes arguing about Bela's death. When I tried to suggest that we talk about the human characters who died, no-one was really interested. It was all about the horse.
• Jordan tried to protect Maria from spoilers in the work he had her do for him. She eventually persuaded him she could handle them. Almost the first thing he then gave her was Verin's full backstory. This was somewhere around the time Path of Daggers came out.
• The oddest research request was Jordan asking how babies feel when they are born. This was eventually used in the bonding scene in Winter's Heart.
• The movie/TV rights situation is beginning to become clearer. Red Eagle sold the film rights on to Universal and it now looks like the rights could return to the Jordan Estate at some point. There is apparently interest from other companies in the rights given the success of other fantasy projects on TV and in film at the moment.

All in all, a good panel and some interesting stuff came out of it.

UNFETTERED gets UK book deal

Fantasy author (and well-known fantasy webmaster) Shawn Speakman's fantasy anthology Unfettered has been picked up by Orbit Books for a UK release next year.

 
Unfettered features short stories by Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Jacqueline Carey, Tad Williams, Naomi Novik, Peter Brett, R.A. Salvatore, Daniel Abraham and Carrie Vaughn, amongst many others. It was released last year in the United States to a good reception. Speakman created the book to help pay for his medical bills after suffering from cancer, with the writers making money back from foreign rights sales.

The UK edition of Unfettered will launch on 20 February 2014. Speakman is also working on a sequel to the book, currently untitled but planned for release in 2015.

The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

According to prophecy, mankind will be saved by the Deliverer, a figure who will unite all of humanity during the Daylight War before defeating the forces of demonkind in the First War. The demons that rise from the Core at night will be destroyed and peace restored to the world. But there is a problem: two men have arisen, both named as the Deliverer by the people they have saved. From the north comes Arlen, the Painted Man. From the south comes Jardir, the ruler of Krasia, and his armies of well-trained, fanatical warriors. For humanity to survive to fight the First War, only one of them can live.

The Daylight War is the third novel of The Demon Cycle, currently planned to run to five volumes. It follows on from the events of the enjoyable The Painted Man and the less-accomplished Desert Spear and replicates the structure of the latter novel. Whilst the current-day storyline continues to unfold, we are treated to lengthy flashbacks to the past to flesh out the background of a key character, in this case Inevera, Jardir's First Wife.

In this case, these flashbacks are not as extensive as The Desert Spear's, which were important to add to our understanding of the character of Jardir (who, as one of the two major protagonists of the series, needed such fleshing-out to better explain his actions at the end of The Painted Man). Inevera, though an important influence on events, is not a character in the same league and as such her flashbacks are more succinct. This leaves more time for the book to address the modern-day storyline, which has effectively been on hold since the end of The Painted Man: The Desert Spear moved the present-day storyline forwards infinitesimally, due to both the flashbacks taking up an immense amount of the book and an apparent decline in Brett's pacing abilities.

Unfortunately, and for reasons that remain unclear, The Daylight War does not do this. An immense amount of the book is taken up by characters sitting around and talking about the plot, about what has happened (and is redundant, as we've already read it) and what might happen next. Then we switch from the rustic faux-Two Rivers/Shirefolk of Team Arlen to the faux-Muslims of Team Jardir and the exact same thing happens again. Then we get a brief scene in which some demons get killed. Then people discuss the plot a bit more in light of these demons being killed. This happens repeatedly for about 650 pages, whilst the reader wonders what is going on.

Finally, towards the end of the book, we get a couple of big action set-pieces in which lots of demons get killed, there are a few reversals as some minor characters are killed off, and then a painfully contrived final cliffhanger showdown between Jardir and Arlen that comes almost out of nowhere, and seems to be more the result of a dwindling page count then any natural plot development. The book's title also seems misleading: the Daylight War simply does not happen in the this novel (all of the major battles are against demons, not between the two human societies). The conclusion hints that maybe it does not need to happen, with the winner of the duel walking off with all of humanity united, so the title may be deliberately ironic.

The novel is not a complete disaster, despite its flirtation with Crossroads of Twilight levels of pacing. Brett's prose is fairly basic - and if anything has decreased slightly since the first novel - but remains effective at drawing environments, characters and situations. He is good with actions scenes, and his ward-based magic system is well-envisaged. Like Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, Brett has come up with a system that is flexible and imaginative, and allows for it to be reinterpreted and upgraded as the series continues. There's more than a tinge of Dungeons and Dragons to this approach, with Brett's characters 'levelling up' in magical power to face the increasingly powerful monsters they face, but it remains an effective device. We get more information about demons, including more scenes from the demons' POV, which give us a hint about their society (but not their origins which, given that Brett's world is clearly ours millennia hence, remain puzzling).

The book also improves - though moderately - in its treatment of female characters. Previously Brett drastically over-used rape as a device of dramatic change, with both male and female characters suffering some kind of sexual abuse whenever he needed them to undergo some kind of moment of character realisation. In The Daylight War several of these abusers get their just desserts and the institutionalised rape within the Krasian culture is heavily eroded by Jardir's progressive policies (we also see the rise of a Krasian sect of female warriors). Unfortunately this has been replaced by a willingness by the female characters to simply use their bodies as a means to get whatever they want, replacing rape with consensual prostitution. At any rate, though Brett seems aware of the previous books' dubious gender politics and moved to address them, there remains some serious issues in this area which makes for some uncomfortable reading.

The Daylight War (**½) is an extremely badly-paced novel that features a tremendous amount of filler and redundant recapping of the plot. Intermittently, we get good moments of characterisation and a fair few decent action beats, along with some imaginative development of the magic system and the basic premise of the series, which remains interesting. But the book's main storyline crawls forwards at a snail's pace (ending in a contrived cliffhanger) and its treatment of female characters and sexuality remains painfully clumsy, despite minor improvements. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett

In the city of Krasia a young boy grows to manhood and becomes a skilled warrior and charismatic warleader. His name is Jardir, and he feels destined to become the new Deliverer, a warrior who will lead humanity to victory over the murderous demons who rise from the Core every night. A man comes from the green lands to the north, Arlen, who impresses Jardir with his fighting skills. When Arlen finds a cache of weapons belonging to the first Deliverer, Jardir feels he has to betray Arlen, steal his weapons and leave him to die in the desert.


Several years later, the army of Krasia boils out of the desert and begins conquering the green cities. But Jardir heads rumours that the northerners have their own Deliverer, a mighty warrior known as the Painted Man who can fend off demons with wards etched into his skin. As Jardir continues his conquests, the Painted Man is forced to confront the sins of his own past as well as a new breed of demons, smarter and more cunning than any who have previously appeared.

The Desert Spear is the second volume of the five-volume Demon Cycle, following up 2008's The Painted Man (aka The Warded Man in the USA), one of the stronger fantasy debuts of recent years (although the amusing fact the novel was almost entirely written on a Blackberry on the author's morning commute seemed to attract more attention). This sequence is interesting because Brett has created a 'points of light' fantasy setting, where areas of civilisation are few and far between and the lands in between are infested with monsters and dangers. Few fantasy novels have codified the concept as well as Brett has done in these two books, where simply walking down a road at night is suicide. The result is an atmosphere of oppression and paranoia that worked well in the first novel and is being eroded in the second, as humanity gets better at fighting the demons and finding ways to survive.

Of course, the story of humanity simply gaining the upper hand and winning would be dull, so Brett ramps up the threat level convincingly in this second novel, with the Krasian invasion giving the northlanders a new enemy to worry about at the same time much more intelligent and canny demons, their princes and generals, start appearing. The escalating threat and stakes is well-handled by the author, who also laces some additional clues about the nature of the demons and life in the Core into the story.

Characterisation is well-handled, particularly of Jardir, Abban and the Painted Man, but Leesha remains a befuddling protagonist whose motivations and decisions seem hard to follow, whilst Rojer isn't given very much to do. Structurally, the novel also works well. Like Steven Erikson's House of Chains, the book opens by concentrating on a single minor character from a previous volume and exploring their backstory in-depth up to the point that it rejoins the main narrative, from where it presses forward. Jardir's story, which makes up roughly the first third of the novel, is gripping stuff, although the Krasians do occasionally veer too close to being Klingons (albeit with institutionalised male rape) for comfort, with much talk of honour and hideous abuse of the apostrophe being perpetuated. Still, it's a tightly-focused narrative that works well.

After this, the story returns to the northlands and continues the tale of The Painted Man. This section is more mixed, with the Painted Man being forced to return to several of his previous homes to confront the aftermath of situations he abandoned and walked away from in the first novel. This section is fairly well-written, but reminds the reader The Painted Man that moved very fast, with the sections in the Painted Man's homeland and later in Fort Miln being set up, developed and resolved with pace and energy. In contrast, these sections in The Desert Spear tend to plot a little, with the Painted Man falling prey to the enemy of good pacing, angst, as he agonises about his decisions and motivations at length.

Nevertheless, these sections remain readable, even though we are clearly in set-up mode for the third book (The Daylight War, which certainly sounds more dynamic) and little is resolved in this novel. One issue that does arise here is Brett's use of rape in the novel (of both men and women), which he employs as a blunt instrument of character development to push characters down a new path. Whilst war is ugly and Brett's world is certainly cold and harsh and it would unrealistic to suggest that rape would not happen in such an environment, it is also the case that he employs it a little too readily, and it doesn't entirely fit in with his prosaic and straightforward prose style. In contrast, Bakker uses it as an actual, horrifying weapon of war by the Consult whilst Martin and Jordan keep it (mostly) firmly off-screen and more effective for being so.

Another major issue is the lack of resolution. The book has something of a finale (two relatively small skirmishes with the new, more powerful demons) but it ends almost randomly, with the final page being rather less dynamic than the ending of may previous chapters. The book simply stops rather than climaxes, which is, as with all things, rather disappointing.

The Desert Spear (***½) is a readable and slightly different epic fantasy novel set in a well-realised world with some great ideas and solid use of action. Unfortunately, the excellent pacing of the first novel has been mostly lost and the author's over-use of rape as a narrative engine is dubious, whilst the book's lack of an ending is problematic. For this reason, it is a less satisfying novel than its forebear. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

News

Orbit UK have released their cover for The Gathering Storm:


Nice. Probably the best Wheel of Time cover to date. Very much in the style of the UK editions of the last three hardcover books, but with the clouds taking on an ominous aspect in the background. Quite impressive, and likely to be better than the final version of the US cover (due any time now).


Elsewhere, Peter V. Brett has confirmed that his second book, The Desert Spear, has been delayed until April 2010 due to the writing delays he had on the book. However, this time around the book will be released simultaneously in the UK and USA.

Books for 2009: Update

I posted back in January about some of the books I was looking forwards to this year. Given that there's been a lot of movement and developments in the interim, I thought an update was in order:


The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker, The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts, Malice by Chris Wooding, Wings of Wrath by Celia Friedman, Dragonfly Falling by Adrain Tchaikovsky, Rides a Dread Legion by Raymond E. Feist and Drood by Dan Simmons are all now available. The Adamantine Palace by Stephen Deas isn't due to ship until next week in the UK, but copies now seem to be available in some bookstores.

Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald, Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry, Turn Coat by Jim Butcher, Zima Blue by Alastair Reynolds, Fall of Thanes by Brian Ruckley, God of Clocks by Alan Campbell, The City and the City by China Mieville, Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton (review coming soon!), Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding, Jasmyn by Alex Bell, Avilion by Robert Holdstock, The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham, Songs of the Dying Earth ed. by George R.R. Martin, Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ark by Stephen Baxter, Above the Snowline by Steph Swainston and The Rats and the Ruling Sea by Robert V.S. Redick all seem to be keeping to their former release dates.


Traitor's Gate by Kate Elliott remains on course for its August release in the USA, but Orbit UK now have a release date of 03/09/09 as well. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett is now scheduled for October 2009. Under the Dome by Stephen King is listed for 12 November 2009 and is being listed as a whopping 900 pages in hardcover.

According to Pat, Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson is nearly complete and should hit its August 2009 release date. Indeed, based on Toll the Hounds it may even come forward a month, but we'll see. Ian Cameron Esslemont's Stonewielder is also due to be handed in at the end of the year for publication in mid-to-late 2010.

The Cardinal's Blades by Pierre Pevel has dropped back a month or two to 16/07/09. Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb seems to have been brought forward a week to 25/06/09. The Long Price: Seasons of War by Daniel Abraham has disappointingly been dropped back two months to 27/11/09. Shadowrise by Tad Williams, which was never looking particularly healthy for a late 2009 release but will now definitely be an early 2010 release instead.

Watcher of the Dead by J.V. Jones still isn't finished, with the author anticipating several more months' work on it and a release in the first half of 2010.

The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan is now called The Dark Commands and has dropped back to a June 2010 release date. The Dervish House by Ian McDonald, which also was looking a bit shaky for 2009 in the first place, is also definitely now a 2010 release.

Times of Anger by Andrzej Sapkowski has surprisingly dropped all the way back to a release date of October 2010, a delay of a year.

For the 'big' authors:

Bantam has been pushing hard for A Dance with Dragons to make it out in October 2009, although the author hasn't finished the book yet. GRRM says the date is doable but as usual, don't believe it until he reports it's done.

Expect an announcement in the next six to eight weeks on A Memory of Light. Brandon Sanderson is heavy into revisions on the first 400,000 words of the book, which would form the planned first volume of the novel. November 2009 looks pretty likely for the first volume with the second to follow in the summer of 2010.

Pat Rothfuss has reported excellent progress on The Wise Man's Fear (writing 60,000 words of new material in less than two months), but no word on how close he is to being done. I anticipate this being more of an early 2010 release than a late 2009 one, but it depends when it's handed in and how quickly DAW want to get it out of the door.

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch is not done yet and its summer 2009 release date (which some sites are still listing it for) is out of the question. A late 2009 release is not out of the question, however, depending on when Scott hands it in.

UPDATE: Peter V. Brett confirms on his blog that The Desert Spear, although now complete, will miss its August date by a couple of months, due to its longer size requiring a more thorough editing process.

The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett

The Painted Man (aka The Warded Man in the USA) is the first book of The Demon Trilogy and is this year's big debut fantasy series from HarperCollins Voyager. I hadn't heard of it prior to receiving the review copy, which is a shame as it's an excellent debut novel that can stand alongside a number of other recent high-profile debuts quite comfortably. I enjoyed it more than Ruckley's Winterbirth, and at about the same quality of enjoyment as Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, for example.

The Painted Man is set in a world where people live in terror of the night. When the sun goes down, demons - or 'corelings' - from below the ground emerge on the surface to kill and feast on human flesh until morning comes. Humanity has discovered powerful defensive magic in the form of wards which can protect their homes, or even patches of ground, but this magic is not always perfect and the different varieties of demons have different ways to overcome the wards.

Eleven-year-old Arlen lives on his parent's farmstead, but a coreling attack leaves his family decimated and many friends and neighbours dead. Despising his father's cowardice for getting his mother killed, Arlen runs away from home, surviving by carving wards into the dirt every night. Eventually he reaches safety in a big city and finds a new, loving family...but memories of his childhood continue to haunt him and he becomes obsessed with the idea of leading humanity to an ultimate victory over the demons, to stop cowering in fear behind walls and wards and go on the offensive.

Meanwhile, thirteen-year-old Leesha is set up for a prosperous life, ready to inherit her father's business and marry one of the most popular boys in her village. However, her mother's bitterness and her betrothed's error in judgement instead leads her on a very different path as she learns the arts of herblore and healing from the town's wise woman.

An entire town is obliterated by a coreling attack, leaving only a single survivor: a three-year-old boy named Rojer. A visiting Jongleur decides to take Rojer her his wing as his apprentice, setting them both on an dangerous path.

The Painted Man is a page-turning book. Whilst at heart it doesn't necessarily journey too far from established tropes (it even starts in a village), it mixes them up nicely. The land of Thesa owes as much to Westerns in its scenery than to traditional epic fantasy, whilst the ward magic is notably different to the wizards 'n' warlocks found in other works. The notions of paranoia and fear, and the price of overcoming that, are also explored in-depth. The characters are likable and interesting. To some extent they follow the traditional 'callow youths come good' model, but the central character of Arlen takes a rather different course and there are hints that his dark and dangerous journey have left him a scarred and bitter character, for all that he finds some happiness at the end of the book. Brett's worldbuilding is pretty good, best exemplified when in a sequence lasting just a few chapters he takes Arlen into a burning desert kingdom and is able to paint it in as much detail and bring it to life as well as does the Free Cities and surrounding villages where the bulk of the narrative takes place. The plotting is also nicely done, with a huge amount of incident and character-building set up in the book, along with a reasonable amount of exposition. The book also comes to a definitive climax rather than a cliffhanger, meaning that whilst there is clearly plenty more to come you're not left hanging in mid-air for a year for the next instalment.

The Painted Man (****) is a most enjoyable novel with an interesting premise that is well-developed and explored. I look forward to reading the sequels. The novel is available now from Voyager in the UK, and will be published (as The Warded Man) in the USA by Del Rey in March 2009. The author has a website here.