On release date for The Blinding Knife, the second volume of Brent Weeks’ Lightbringer series, the author, through the Orbit Books blog, has news about a new addition to the series, a fourth (and supposedly final) volume to the series:

I’m happy to tell you that the Lightbringer Series will be four books. (No, don’t worry, I’m not floating down the Never-Ending Series River, though yes, I do feel the current!) I was always torn between three books and four for this series, and as I got working on book three, I realized I was going to have to cut way too much great stuff to fit the story into three books, so Orbit and I have agreed to a fourth book. Progress on the next one has been fantastic.

While it’s always disconcerting to hear that a Fantasy series ‘needs’ to be expanded, in light of the ‘Never-Ending Series River’ that Weeks mentions, especially a successful one, like Weeks’, I’m more confident than usual about this one. Weeks has proven through five novels that he crams more content, character development, action and plot into each volume of his series than most similar authors, so I don’t forsee a problem with turgid, meandering volumes that have ruined other Epic Fantasy series. And, hey, a fourth Lightbringer just means more fun for the rest of us, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand.