New cover art: Abercrombie & Morgan

Here's the UK cover art for Joe Abercrombie's Half a King, due out on 3 July:

And here's the American cover art for The Dark Defiles by Richard Morgan, due out on 7 October:

Richard Morgan completes THE DARK DEFILES

Richard Morgan has confirmed that he has finished The Dark Defiles, the concluding volume of the Land Fit For Heroes trilogy which began with The Steel Remains in 2008 and continued with The Cold Commands in 2011.

As Morgan says, this is by far the longest book he's ever written. At 247,000 words, it's a little bit shorter than Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind (259,000 words) and almost half again the length of The Cold Commands. At one stage the book was getting so big there were talks about splitting it, but that fear seems to have passed.

The book is listed as being released in the UK on 21 August and in the USA on 7 October, though neither date is finalised yet.

Great news. Morgan has reported that his next project will probably be SF, possibly set in one of his already-existing universes, so it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with. In the meantime, we have one very large fantasy (with SF overtones) novel to tide us over with.

UK cover art for Richard Morgan's THE DARK DEFILES

An early look at the working cover art for Richard Morgan's The Dark Defiles, provisionally due in August 2013:

No, I haven't read the book: it's still being written. The quote is from my review of The Cold Commands and may not be present on the final version of the cover for The Dark Defiles.

Richard Morgan on THE DARK DEFILES

Richard Morgan has released an excerpt from The Dark Defiles, the third book in his Land Fit For Heroes series and the follow-up to the excellent Cold Commands.

He's also revealed that the book is becoming rather larger than he was hoping, and he and his publishers are now actively considering breaking it down into two slimmer volumes. This isn't set in stone yet and depends on the final page count and if there's a place where he can split the narrative satisfyingly.

"Currently TDD is planned as a single volume to wrap up the trilogy – but it’s looking to be a dangerously fat volume, and I’m not sure how happy I am about that. So we may be talking about two books rather than one, forming a Land Fit for Heroes quartet. But that again will depend on finding a decent narrative shape for each of the two potentially slimmer books – I hate cliff-hanger finishes with a passion, and want to avoid writing one at all costs. Have to see how it shapes up further down the road……"

No release dates have been given yet, but I suspect we won't see the third book until the latter part of 2013 at the earliest.