Pat, from Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, recently contacted Betsy Wollheim at DAW Books in regards to the release of Patrick Rothfuss’s second novel, The Wise Man’s Fear.
Most of you will remember that Rothfuss actually wrote his first trilogy as a novel before having it split up into three volumes after being picked up by Matt Bailer (SF/F Agent extraordinaire). This was a good thing, it meant that Rothfuss had at least a rough draft of the final two novels in the trilogy completed. One would think this would result in a quick release schedule of the three novels.
Not so much, I guess. Here’s Betsy’s reply to Pat:
Pat will not be delivering the complete first draft until March, and I’ve only read a few tantalizing sections. We’re hoping to publish in April ’09. We’re planning at least two rewrites.
It’s disappointing that we’ll have to wait so long. But, like Pat mentioned, it’s also nice to know that DAW isn’t screwing around with what is sure to be their most successful trilogy since Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Rothfuss has a good thing going on and I want it to be the best damn trilogy it can be.
Meanwhile, I’ll just keep cracking away at all the other terrific novels out there…
That’s too bad for a lot of readers, but gives me a little bit more time to catch up and read the book. That’s my silver lining. :)
The good news is that I will have time to go back and re-read Name of the Wind. Always a good thing.
The silver lining of this is that I think it’s fair for us to expect The Wise Man’s Fear to be at least as good as The Name of the Wind, if not better.
Rothfuss is a terrific writer and with that much time to refine the novel, I think we’re in for a treat.
It’s just too bad that we were all lead to believe that, because the trilogy was effectively finished, we wouldn’t be waiting very long between volumes. This big publishing gap has been quite an eye opener!
[…] was announced a few months later that there were going to be delays with the release of the novel. Rothfuss later explained the […]