The US release

I know, this isn’t exactly what we do here normally, but I figure that as long as we’re a blog that puts you, the readers, in the know about geek culture and the biggest and best of novels and other media there is to experience, I simply have to point this out.

The final book of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light,  is dated for release on January 3rd, 2013.  The cover art has been released, pictured here.  The first section of the prologue is available to read at Dragonmount.  If you’re interested, you can find it here.

More after the jump.

The non-US release cover.

I understand that there are a lot of people out there that gave up on this series a long time ago, they got tired of the waiting, or the story dragged a bit much for them.  I have to tell you this.  When the original author, Robert Jordan, passed away in 2007, he had enough notes and written drafts put together to finish out what he’d originally intended to be one more book.  Jordan and his wife selected Brandon Sanderson to pick up what was left and finish the book.

Sanderson ended up making it three books.  Not because he wanted more cash out of it or that he wanted more time on a contract or that he was stretching it, there was just that much setup left to do.  And let me say this, books 12 and 13 do not drag along in the plot department.  Things happen, a lot of them. Honestly, with the scope of everything left to tie up at this point, I’m astonished it can be done in one more volume.

If you gave up on these books, I implore you to pick them up again.  If you’ve never read it and are looking for high fantasy that isn’t Tolkien, these books are for you.  Any library worth a grain of salt will have these books.  There’s no excuse not to.  I don’t feel like it’s hyperbole to say that this is will be the closing of the first great fantasy series of the new millennium.

On a side note, the cover art above the jump is from a new artist to the series.  The prior artist had been in the process of painting one in the style that he’d graced the previous 12 books, 1 prequel and 2 game book covers with.  Sadly, he also recently passed away, although this year’s JordanCon displayed the work in progress that he’d been developing for the new title.  There are several flaws here and there, but that’s why it was in progress.  That art is pictured below.  That artist was Darrell K. Sweet, and once you see the style, you’ll immediately recognize it.  Mr Sweet had been a long working artist especially in the line of fantasy novels for Tor books.