Steven Erikson confirms his Malazan WITNESS trilogy is now a quartet

Steven Erikson has confirmed that his in-progress Witness Trilogy, a sequel to his classic Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence (1999-2011), will now be a quartet.

Erikson published the first book in the series, The God is Not Willing, in 2021 to considerable acclaim and success. His previous two Malazan novels had been the first two books in the Kharkanas Trilogy, Forge of Darkness (2012) and Fall of Light (2016), but had sold relatively poorly, necessitating a shift to a new project.

Erikson had planned to conclude the Kharkanas sequence, writing several hundred pages of the third book, Walk in Shadow, before his publishers convinced him to return to the Witness sequence. Erikson was hundreds of pages into the second book, No Life Forsaken, before realising it was really two books. After this realisation came about, Erikson pressed on to complete both books before submitting them to his publisher.

This process is almost complete (he had two months' work left to do two months ago), and Erikson is hopeful this means that No Life Forsaken and the as-yet-untitled third book can be released in relatively quick succession (though I suspect it'll be in subsequent years) in the near future.

His plan is to then finish Walk in Shadow (which Erikson was also hinting some time ago might also become two books) and the fourth and final Witness novel. Erikson reiterated that Karsa Orlong will only appear in the final book in the series. He also has two additional Malazan novellas under contract.

Possibly not coincidentally, several of Erikson's publishing houses have put up the same placeholder date for No Life Forsaken recently: 28 August 2025. This seems fairly achievable based on Erikson's current progress.

Steven Erikson starts work on sequel to THE GOD IS NOT WILLING

Steven Erikson has confirmed that work is now underway on the second novel in the Witness trilogy. The first book, The God is Not Willing, was published in June to a strong critical reception. The sequel will be called No Life Forsaken.

The trilogy is set a decade or so after the events of the main Malazan Book of the Fallen series and follows events on the continent of Genabackis, revolving around the offspring of Karsa Orlong and his reputation as a walking god, as well as how the Malazan Empire's ongoing occupation of the continent is faring.

Erikson notes that he is working on multiple projects simultaneously: he is also writing Walk in Shadow, the concluding volume of the Kharkanas Trilogy, a prequel to the Malazan saga set hundreds of thousands of years earlier and revolving around the Tiste race.

With work only just getting underway on No Life Forsaken, I suspect we won't see it now until mid-to-late 2023 at the earliest. The next Malazan novel to be published will be The Jhistal by Ian Cameron Esslemont, the fourth book in the Path to Ascendancy series which will focus on the nascent Malazan Empire's invasion of the Falari subcontinent. That book is currently tentatively scheduled for Spring 2022.