Steven Erikson puts Kharkanas Trilogy "on hold", starts Malazan sequel trilogy

Steven Erikson has, surprisingly, announced that he is putting his Kharkanas Trilogy on hold and will be starting work on the long-promised Toblakai Trilogy instead, a sequel to his ten-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Erikson announced both trilogies before wrapping up the Malazan series in 2011 with The Crippled God. The Kharkanas Trilogy is set 300,000 years or so before the main Malazan sequence and details the backstory of the three Tiste races (Andii, Liosan and Edur). Erikson released Forge of Darkness to a generally warm reception in 2012, but took four years to release the follow-up, Fall of Light (2016). On release, the novel got a mixed (but leaning towards lukewarm) reception from readers.

Erikson has also worked on other novels in the meantime, writing three Betty comedic space opera novels and a stand-alone SF work, Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart, which will be released in late 2018. It was assumed that the final Kharkanas novel, Walk in Shadow, would also be released in 2018 or 2019.

Now, according to Erikson, he has put Walk in Shadow on hold and will be starting work shortly on The God is Not Willing, the first novel in the Toblakai Trilogy. This trilogy will catch up on the adventures of Karsa Orlong shortly after the events of The Crippled God and - it is believed - will see him return home to his people to rouse them in a crusade against "civilisation". It is likely that this trilogy will also catch up on at least some of the situation in other parts of the world following the events of the Malazan Book of the Fallen and Ian Esslemont's Malazan Empire books.

This news is startling, since Erikson has formerly been one of the fastest, hardest-working and most reliable authors in the fantasy canon. However, he clearly struggled with Fall of Light (which took more than three times as long to write as any of his previous books of comparable size), so this move may help recharge the creative batteries.

It's also good news for fans: the deep backhistory of the Tiste is fascinating to some fans, but many of the main series fans seemed much more excited about the Karsa Orlong saga, expanding as it will on a fan-favourite character from previous books.

No publication date is set for the first Toblakai novel, but hopefully we will see it this side of 2020.

ETA: From Steven Erikson:

Status Update: Completing the third and final Willful Child novel, The Search For Spark. Then it's onward to the first Karsa Orlong novel (what about the third Kharkanas novel? On hold). Thanks everyone for your kind greetings.

Hmm, okay. I've made a point of never dissembling to my readers so why start now? The reasons for this decision (delaying Walk in Shadow) are varied: the basic situation is as follows. For reasons unknown to me, my agent or my publishers, DoD and FoL have tanked in terms of sales. I wasn't even aware of that until we started marketing the First Contact novel, RKH, but when the details came out it took the wind out of my sails (putting it mildly). Now, if it was a matter of the style I employed for the Kharkanas trilogy turning readers off, then the sales of FoD should have been decent, only to then fall off for FoL. But that wasn't the case. Strangely, the Book of the Fallen series remains strong in terms of sales. Was it because it was a prequel? Possibly. Did FoD come too soon after TCG? Maybe. Or is there some kind of reader-fatigue going on? Could be. One theory I've been considering is a more general wariness among fantasy fans regarding trilogies and series -- having been burned by other authors waiting for books, are readers just holding back until the trilogy is done, before buying in? But then, Dancer's Lament sold brilliantly (and it too is a prequel). Anyway, the upshot is, given what we perceive as considerable enthusiasm for the Karsa trilogy, we decided to jump right in. The story picks up four or five years after the ten book series, so there'll be plenty of room to explore the fall-out, and room for favourite characters to make an appearance beyond Karsa himself. I do remain committed to writing Walk in Shadow and humbly apologize for you (few?) readers eagerly awaiting that novel.

Thanks so much for all your comments and encouragement. To those of you waiting for the trilogy to finish before buying, no need to apologize. Waiting for books sucks. Personally, I wish FoL hadn't taken three years to write. That alone is a long wait for any reader. I think what's made the Kharkanas trilogy so fragile for me is that it was always a risky proposition, in terms of tone, atmosphere and writing style. It's dense stuff, and while the style is seductive (for me) it's also one that requires a certain frame of mind. I wasn't aware of how vulnerable that frame of mind was until it got hammered. It may well turn out that after the first Karsa novel (working title: The God is not Willing), I'll head straight back to Walk in Shadow. Sometimes momentum is all one needs.

New Steven Erikson MALAZAN novella released

Steven Erikson will release a new Malazan novella featuring the characters of Bauchelain and Kobral Broach this month. Entitled The Fiends of Nightmaria, it will be released by Subterranean Press and features illustrations by David Gentry.

Pre-orders are currently sold out, but Sub Press hope to have more copies available soon. This is the sixth Malazan novella featuring the characters, following on from Blood Follows (2002), The Healthy Dead (2004), The Lees of Laughter's End (2007), Crack'd Pot Trail (2009) and The Wurms of Blearmouth (2012). Significantly, this likely means that a second omnibus collection of novellas could be released soon, as the first three were collected in The Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, Volume I (UK, USA). A Volume II is likely to follow.

Erikson has said that he plans to release nine novellas featuring the characters in total, so three more are likely to follow. Erikson's next full-length Malazan novel, Fall of Light, is due for publication this month, on 21 April in the UK and 26 April in the USA.

Malazan Update

Amazon has suggested new release dates for the next two Malazan novels.

Fall of Light, the much-delayed second volume in The Kharkanas Trilogy by Steven Erikson, will now be published on 16 February 2016. This will pick up after the events of Forge of Darkness.

Meanwhile, Ian Cameron Esslemont's next Malazan novel will be called Dancer's Lament and will open the Path to Ascendancy series. This series will be a prequel to the existing Malazan novels and will chart the backstory of Kellanved, Dancer and other key figures from the founding of the Malazan Empire and the preceding years.

Steven Erikson to publish SF novel in 2014

There's been a bit of a change-around in Steven Erikson's schedule for 2014. In a Tor.com Q&A last week he confirmed he's still very early in the writing of Fall of Light, the second novel in the Kharkanas Trilogy, and is still wrestling with a major structural issue which he isn't fully sure how to resolve yet. This has led to the expectation that Fall of Light won't make its June 2014 release date and may instead fall later in the year or even 2015.

However, Erikson will still be publishing a novel next year. Willfull Child (its unclear if the incorrect spelling is deliberate or not) is a comic SF novel that riffs on Star Trek. The blurb is as follows:

These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - a kind of James T Kirk crossed with 'American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through 'the infinite vastness of interstellar space'...

The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken his life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a smart, inventive and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown adventure. The result is this smart. inventive, occasionally wildly OTT and often very funny novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

The novel has a listed release date of 5 June 2014 and an estimated page-count of somewhere around 300 pages. Erikson published a longer excerpt from the book on Tor last year.

Updated MALAZAN release dates

Amazon's latest information suggests that both of the next Malazan novels - Ian Cameron Esslemont's Assail and Steven Erikson's Fall of Light - have unfortunately been delayed.

According to Amazon, Assail will be released on 27 March 2014. The blurb is as follows:

The final chapter in the awesome, epic story of the Malazan empire.

Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive and sailor's tavern and now countless adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in search of riches. All these adventurers have to guide them are legends and garbled tales of the dangers that lie in wait -- hostile coasts, fields of ice, impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword. And beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history's very beginnings. Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn by contract, but by the promise of answers: answers to mysteries that Shimmer, second in command, wonders should even be sought. Arriving also, part of an uneasy alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii soldiery, comes the bard Fisher kel Tath. And with him is a Tiste Andii who was found washed ashore and who cannot remember his past life, yet who commands far more power than he really should. Also venturing north is said to be a mighty champion, a man who once fought for the Malazans, the bearer of a sword that slays gods: Whiteblade.

And lastly, far to the south, a woman guards the shore awaiting both her allies and her enemies. Silverfox, newly incarnated Summoner of the undying army of the T'lan Imass, will do anything to stop the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the entire continent and beyond. Casting light on mysteries spanning the Malazan empire, and offering a glimpse of the storied and epic history that shaped it, Assail is the final chapter in the epic story of the Empire of Malaz.

Meanwhile, Steven Erikson's Fall of Light, the second volume of The Kharkanas Trilogy, is now listed for 5 June 2014. No blurb is yet available.