Found Just Now

So being a fan of The Wheel of Time series I should probably have known that the latest book came out a few weeks ago. I should have known that the book I've been waiting for 4 years to be published has been finally released. You would think. However, considering I was under the impression that it wasn't coming out until December of NEXT YEAR I wasn't even really thinking about it. I'm not even sure what made me think of it today but I thought, I'll see what the progress is. And BOOM there it was. Released Oct 27. You can get all the news on this series at Dragonmount, pretty much the most comprehensive site on The Wheel of Time.

For those of you who don't know, Robert Jordan died last year before he could finish A Memory of Light (the original title for the final novel). Shortly afterward, it was announced that Brandon Sanderson would be contracted to finish the novel using Jordan's notes. As upset as I was that someone else would be writing it, I was still pleased it would be finished. You would think knowing that it has FINALLY come out would make me ecstatic but it doesn't and this is why: it's no longer one book called A Memory of Light. It is now going to be 3 books and this The Gathering Storm is the first of that final series within the series. It's being passed as a creative decision and not a monetary one. I say BS. Why do I say BS? Not because I believe they really did it for the money but because I think it's the final F-You to Terry Goodkind. If you're not a fan of the series this will seem a little off base to you but there was a kind of rivalry between the two authors. I don't know if it was real or made up by their fans. What I do know is that Jordan's fans saw Goodkind as a cheap imitation. I like both series' but I kind of see their point. A lot of the plot points in Goodkind's series were an obvious imitation of ones from Jordan's. When Jordan announced he had a rare disease, shortly afterward Goodkind did too. Now I'm wondering who's decision it was to make the final book three instead of one. Dragonmount explains it and I'll repost for you:

Why did they split "A Memory of Light" into three parts?
As stated above, before he died, Robert Jordan frequently said that he intended to write just ONE more WoT novel, entitled A MEMORY OF LIGHT, which would conclude the series. The decision to take his remaining notes and publish them as three novels was ultimately something Harriet annd Brandon thought was best in order to properly tell the story.

Before Brandon had posted that article, we asked Harriet that same question in an interview we did with her in March 2009, right when the news about the split started to come out. Here's what she said:

The material that Jim left was very capacious, and Brandon saw after working with it for a while that he could not complete it in less than a total of 750,000 words. This is probably an impossible thing to bind - unless we sold it with a magnifying glass. 250,000 words is in fact a fat, or Rubensesque, novel. You will notice that 3 x 250,000 equals 750,000. So... part of the decision was based on making a book within the scope of binding technology. The major part of the decision was to get ALL the story that Jim left out there for us all.

On his blog, Brandon Sanderson said:

I'll be honest, this is a big, big project. I stand by one promise to you, no matter what else happens. I will NOT artificially inflate the size of this book. It doesn't matter to me how many volumes Tor decides to make it; the story is the same to me. One volume, as Robert Jordan planned it. Enormous.

Why would I not believe all these people who apparently only want what Jordan originally intended? Because Goodkind's final story was told in a trilogy of books.

And that's my story.

Added later: Ok, and that's not all. I guess I should say (because it's only fair) that all the reviews of the novel so far seem to be more than favorable. Dragonmount did theirs early (no surprise). I found a good review (objective, not completely favorable) through the blog search engine on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. One I might start following. I don't follow enough fantasy bloggers and I definitely feel my difference in my little world!