Follow Up on Rothfuss

Back in the fall, I wrote an article here on the block about Patrick Rothfuss, the actions of his editor over the summer, and the fandom’s speculation about book three. It blew up in recent weeks, and I can only assume that’s because Rothfuss has been more amiable and open about The Doors of Stone during his recent live streams. The Eolian is a YouTube channel that puts out clips from his streams in more bitesize and straight to the point pieces, so check those out if you want to get caught up.

I you read my previous article, you’ll remember that I covered fan speculation on why Rothfuss was taking so long with The Doors of Stone and what this book is going to look like when it finally comes out. Well, Rothfuss himself has dispelled a few of those myths latelys, so let’s get into that!

First of all, Rothfuss has publicly acknowledged that he was in a very bad mental place in recent years, that he knows he took it out on his fans at times, and that he’s doing much better this year. Things are looking up in that respect, and he has certainly proved it in him streams. He actually *gasp* answering questions about The Doors of Stone without getting snarky!

Second, yes, he is indeed still writing The Doors of Stone and he feels its going well. The most recent Eolian clip devotes a lot of time talking about world building and lore he’s further for Vintas and the culture there, particularly surrounding their currency. (Jaded beware, he does tie in a plug for his charity efforts, which is something a lot of fans have grown weary of hearing about in lieu of honest writing updates. I think we can handle it alongside updates though, right?)

One of the biggest speculations about The Doors of Stone has been that it was getting too big, too monstrous to ever be published as a single volume. Rothfuss has recently dispelled that, and actually claims it will be notably shorter than The Wise Man’s Fear. This is good news! The audiobook for The Wise Man’s Fear was 43 hours long, which of course means it was far too much for Kvothe to have passed on to Chronicler in the course of their second day together at the inn . Hopefully The Wise Man’s Fear is due to return to the realm of vaguely possible to consume in the timeframe it’s meant to occupy.

Rothfuss has assured us that no, the book getting away on him is not the reason it’s taking so long, and that yes, he is indeed making good progress. It also seems very unlikely that he’s been secretly working on 6 other books to drop all at once when he finally returns to the printed page, as some have suggested. (This coming from the Tor article where he bragged about being the author who has tricked us all into reading a million-word prologue.)

Rothfuss has also confirmed that book three will spend at least 25% at the university, but less than half. So if the university days of The Name of the Wind has always been the best thing about the trilogy for you, you may be disappointed, but if you liked the expanded world exploration in The Wise Man’s Fear, you’re in for a treat. Personally I’m just hoping we don’t get any more lengthy side quests to have sex with faeries.

Overall I’m feeling a renewed excitement about The Doors of Stone, and I have more hope now that I will indeed get to read book three at some point in the next decade. Hopefully the first half of that next decade! And if it goes up for ARC readers on NetGalley you’d better believe I’ll be applying for it! What about you?