Yep, it’s dark alright. And defiled. After the blades on the covers of the previous covers for the A Land Fit for Heroes series, The Steel Remains and The Cold Commands, it’s certainly an in your face change for the series. Pretty bitchin’, if you’ll excuse the term. It feels like a death metal version of the recent UK cover for Terry Brooks’ Bloodfire Quest, which, well, is a hilarious way to think of the series in general.
Presented without comment. (Since I’m going into full-on media blackout on The Hobbit, and haven’t watched it myself!)
UPDATE: The YouTube trailer was taken down, but you can watch it here. Also, I may or may not have broken my media blackout, due to extreme pressure from my readers and innate curiosity.
Peter V. Brett announced today that he has completed The Daylight War, the third volume in his Demon Cycle series. He comments on the experience:
When you work on a single project for three years, though massive ups and downs in your personal life and equally massive ups and downs creatively, it is a strange feeling to be done. There were times I never thought the day would come, hurdles in the story I never thought I would surpass.
He follows this by speaking directly about The Daylight War, at what fans can expect from the novel, and beyond:
Is The Daylight War better than The Warded Man or The Desert Spear? That is not for me to decide. It is very different in spirit and intent than those other books, intentionally so. I have grown as a writer and changed as a person over the last few years, and the book reflects that. When I start writing the same book over and over, then it’s time to worry.
But if I cannot say it’s better, I can say that it is the best book I could make it. I cut no corners, skipped no hurdles and took no shortcuts. This is clear in some ways from the sheer size of the book: 254,000 words (5% longer than Desert Spear, and close to 3x the size of your average genre book).
But it’s more clear in the content. Daylight War explores the characters of the Demon Cycle in a new light, adding depth to the world and weight to their actions. If Warded Man was a book about fear and Desert Spear was about opposing cultures struggling to find common ground, Daylight War is, as my editor put it, “a book about relationships”.
And some of them, I think, will surprise you.
[…]
The next book in the Demon Cycle series is tentatively titled The Skull Throne. There has been a working file for that book for over a year, with the stepsheet currently at 84 pages, spelling out in great detail the 21 key chapters of the book’s story arc. Doubtless more will be added, but I already have a clear skeleton to start from.
Given my thoughts on The Desert Spear, I’m a little concerned to be hearing the bolded comments from Brett. I felt that The Warded Man (which I quite liked) balanced nicely on the line of being an character-heavy narrative with just enough gut-wrenching action and magic to keep things interesting. The second volume expanded the relationship side of the story, quite dramatically, and suffered from poor pacing and some self-indulgent bloat. It also didn’t help that I felt that those relationships are the weakest part of the series, taking a back seat to Brett’s exploration of magic, his world-building and action. The Daylight War seems poised to continue along this path. Of course, I was something of an outlier in my opinion, so Brett’s legion of fans are surely salivating at the idea that this is his longest novel yet.
And, despite these reservations, I find myself looking forward to sinking again into Arlen’s story, especially given the events at the very end of The Desert Spear, which speak of major changes coming to Brett’s series. I’ll give the novel a fair shake when I get my hands on it.
The Daylight War will launch on the week of February 11th, 2013.
The original, totally awesome badge, minus my facetious photoshopping, is by Storied Threads/Veronica Bailey
George R.R. Martin provided an update this weekend on progress for both The Winds of Winter and The World of Ice and Fire. He says:
We all know how long the last novel took. And now I am writing the “sidebar” (hoo hah) about the first Dance of the Dragons, the fratricidal civil war between King Aegon II and his half-sister Rhaenyra, for THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE, and it’s turned into a monster too.
As of today, I have a hundred and three bloody manuscript pages (some VERY bloody) and still no end at hand. I had hoped to finish this one today, but… no, not even close. Lots more to write.
I think there’s some good stuff here, and judging by the reception my reading got at Chicon, most of you seem to like the fake history too. But DAMN, there a lot of it.
The ‘sidebar’ he’s referring to will appear in The World of Ice and Fire, an encyclopaedic volume collecting much of the history, maps, characters and vast backstory that Martin has created for A Song of Ice and Fire, but which will likely never appear in the novels themselves. I’m sure there will be much sniffing at the fact that he’s not dedicating all of his time directly to The Winds of Winter, but, hey, any A Song of Ice and Fire content is welcome to this fan.
UPDATE: As pointed out below, that’s 103 pages of manuscript for The World of Ice and Fire, not The Winds of Winter, which is further along.
Actual progress on the novel seems slow at 103 pages. By comparison, when submitted, A Dance with Dragons was 1510 manuscript pages. So, not even 10% of the way through. In other words, it’s going to be a long wait, fans. My suggestion? Go read some Daniel Abraham, then follow it up with some N.K. Jemisin, Greg Keyes, David Anthony Durham, Kate Elliott and Tad Williams. After that, you’ll still have to wait a while, but, hell, at least you’ll have experienced some damn fine novels.
EA has announced the next game in the Dragon Age series, and done so in an interesting way. Generally, for announcements of this calibre, EA will wait for one of the several large trade shows that happen throughout North America, Europe and Japan, like, E3, Leipzig Games Convention, or Tokyo Games Show respectively. This time, however, EA, through one of the Dragon Age series’ Executive Producers, Mark Darrah, they announced the game through their website.
The announcement explains why they’ve chosen a non-traditional method for the announcement:
Recently, I said that we didn´t want to talk about Dragon Age III unless we had something to show. I´m trying to stick to that plan and won´t be revealing much today. That said, a lot of information and rumors have surfaced recently and we don´t want to hide from them. There are a BUNCH of things that I really want to share with you but I want to do this right, and doing it right requires some more time.
This decision appears designed to foster goodwill with a fanbase grumbling with discontent at the recent handling of the Dragon Age franchise, including the dramatic changes introduced to the series with its second volume, many of which appear to have been made to speed development of the game, following on the unexpected success of Dragon Age: Origins, rather than to improve the series’ gameplay and storytelling through natural evolution of the game systems. Read More »
