I just learned that Robert Jordan (pen name for James Oliver Rigney, Jr.), the bestselling author of the gigantic Wheel of Time series, died Sunday of a rare blood disease, which he’d been fighting against for years.
‘Wheel of Time’ author Robert Jordan dies
(I’d link to his direct blog, but it looks like that site has buckled under the amount of internet traffic. There was a general message of sympathy for Jordan’s family and assurances that his unfinished work is being handled by family members and the publisher, Tor.)
If you haven’t delved into the Wheel of Time series, it’s an amazing fantasy series with a depth and breadth of world-building that few other authors have reached, in my opinion. Sure, it has a few clunker titles and drew out to be incredibly long and complex, with a prequel written before the thing finished, but I think everyone who read it looked forward to discovering the ending, to see how it all would come together in the final book, which Jordan was working on when he died. I think it is sadly ironic that my friends and I, along with many of the fans of this series, sometimes voiced the sentiment that, “Wouldn’t it be a shame if he died before he finished the series?” But none of us ever really took the thought seriously.
The final book is titled A Memory of Light, and will potentially be a “1500 page monster.”
Here’s the Wikipedia entry for Robert Jordan.
Neil Gaiman’s reaction on hearing the news.
No smile for this post, I’m afraid.
No smile for this post, I’m afraid.
*nods*
🙁
sigh
:’-(
Sad. Very very sad.