The decision is not altogether surprising, as the first three books in the series - A Cavern of Black Ice (1999), A Fortress of Grey Ice (2002), A Sword from Red Ice (2007) and Watcher of the Dead (2010) - had been published a significant amount of time ago and the series had gone on hiatus whilst the author battled a large number of problems that had destroyed her writing time. Work on the series resumed several years ago, but at a slow pace as the author had a day job. Once she was able to work on the book full-time, Endlords was concluded relatively quickly.
However, Tor themselves have form for resuming series that had spent many years on hiatus, picking up George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series after almost a decade on ice in 2008, and publishing the concluding volume of David Keck's Tales of Durand sequence over a decade after the publication of the second volume.
In addition to the completed Endlords and in-progress A Sword Named Loss, Jones was also able to offer Tor the reprint rights to the completed, million-plus-selling, Robert Jordan-blurbed Book of Words trilogy, but it seems they were not interested.
Somewhat bafflingly, Tor also suggested that "the market for the style of fantasy" may have moved on, which I'm sure will be news to the likes of Joe Abercrombie, James Islington, Mark Lawrence, Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson (who just had a new fantasy novel published by Tor!) and George R.R. Martin.
Jones has not yet heard back from her British publishers, Orbit UK, but I would not be surprised if they took a similar tack to Tor.
The good news is that it sounds like Tor will not be contesting a return of the rights of the existing books to Jones, so she will be able to self-reprint the existing books and publish Endlords for the first time, probably much faster than if she'd had to wait for Tor to find a slot in their schedule for her.
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