But they promise to release them in a span of 2 years :D

www.tor.com/index.php

If you are curious, Brandon does a pretty good job of explaining the reasoning behind the decision here:

www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/Splitting-AMOL

From my perspective the worst thing that could have possibly happened is a single book that attempts to finish the series without tying up all the threads. I'm relatively happy with the decision they've made.

Its like software. It goes bad if you rush it.

Of course if these last books turn out to be nearly as bad as crossroads of twilight then I'll happily join the lynch mob. MOL better be worth the wait.

It looks like Nerd's think alike! :D

Looking forward to read the last chapter of the series. And will this time read it in english and not norwegian. Can't wait for the translation.

Ugh, CoT was waaaay too slow for me. So slow I failed to finish it both times I tried to. I guess I'll give it a third try when the first part of MOL comes out.

I am just glad they are being finished, I have been waiting a long time. At least they will give us some to read once in a while :)

Hey Ayende and everyone,

Ever read the A Song of Ice and Fire series? I would say that's currently by far the best fantasy series out there. It's very gritty, and very realistic. It's by George R. R. Martin. I used to think Wheel of Time was the best, but Ice and Fire really blew my mind - it's like an eye-opener for what real, high-fantasy writing should be like. WoT might come in a distant second to that, although I happen to agree that the latter books were incredibly slow, and that made the series less appealing to me. I can get through slow things, but when it's also difficult to read for other reasons, that's when it gets annoying.

Kyle, ASOIAF is great. Now we're waiting on ADWD. Reading fantasy these days is a long game of waiting spotted with moments of terrifying joy.

I'm not really unhappy about it....I wasn't in a huge hurry for them to end the story. If they can keep me entertained (which they have) then they can drag it on for another decade.

As long as Sanderson doesn't do what Brian Herbert did to Dune, I'll be happy.

I'm ok with this. Assuming they finish it in some capacity, without completely destroying my childhood :)

Well, I gave up on the series after about 7 books, at that point, the story was just repeating with the odd bit of new information. From what I have heard from friends, I haven't missed a thing.

Though I do agree about the fire and ice series. Highly worthy. I just hope the author ends the series when he says he will and doesn't drag it on until I am 80.

cmb..

Let's see... I started reading WoT in college in 1990 when the first book came out. I was really excited and religiously purchased the next 5-6 books every year as they came out. Then Crown of Swords was delayed, then Path of Daggers was delayed.

I started finding other things to do, and totally lost interest. By the time I bought Winters Heart I was completely bored and couldn't even finish the book.

This series is just plain dead. It started out with potentional, but it died long ago before Jordan himself died.

If anyone wants to buy Great Hunt through Winters Heart in hardcover, let me know. :-)

Yeah, what Craig said. The story drifted off into a maze of twisty little passages, all alike years ago.

I agree that it is frustrating. OTOH, Sanderson is the perfect author to finish the series and it's a ****good thing that he's got the cojones to do what has to be done, even if that means chunking it up into three books.

__"I consider them a big reason for why I able to understand English at the level that I want."

thanks, you've made my day. Thanks for a good laugh (in a good way, no worries ;-).

a little rant on ASOIAF series, review taken from amazon (as I am not a good reviewer I'll put here oppinion that is mine as well), just to have here other side of a coin (or probably I differentiate between quality and quantity ;p )

__It is quite surprising to me that many readers grade this book so high. I agree on the talent of the author to make plots, to take the reader to the unexpected and that it is interesting to be so realistically "unjust". Whatever good or bad happens, it can happen to any character - like in real life.

But isn't it a "fantasy"story? Then why so much violence?! Friendship doesn't last, Love doesn't protect and life has no value. It is almost a pity that imagination has created a world such as this. And why am I after threethousand(!!) pages not much further in the plot besides more murder, devastation and constant resurrections?

There is a difference between good literature (like "Lord of the Rings" a very complex story with a well founded plot and written with high imagination bound into 1400(!) pages) and merely a product.

I fear what started with a great idea here has become exactly that - a product.

K. Schreiber

I really started getting into Fantasy books with this series growing up. I agree they need to hurry up and finish the thing though.

If you want some good fantasy series to read (that are complete) you should read some of the following:

The Deed of Packsinarion by Elizabeth Moon. Great book you can get in omnibus trade paperback format.

The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Another good series. Although the new TV show is hurting the series more than helping I think.

I'm reading the George R.R. Martin books now and they are great.

Wow. Just wow. (I thought that this particular series completely fizzled out after book three. I did read couple more, I think, but those were "meh"). BTW, if you want light (mostly) and funny series -- try Discworld by Terry Pratchett. There's more then 30 books in the series now, and they all are pretty decent (older ones are more "fantasy", and the newer ones tend to have more mature writing. The main thing though is that they are all good, and even after 30+ books there are no signs of typical "fizzling out")

Sometimes I'm happy I stopped reading epic fantasy when I did. I mean, I was so close to falling into that Wheel of Time trap. Phew.

I was frustrated to hear that they'd split these up but Brandon does make a good case on his blog. If they are good then I'll be happy. If not then there will be a lynch-mob long before I get to Sanderson so...

I loved The Song of Ice and Fire books right up until the most recent book (which frustrated the crap out of me) and given the wait for the new book I'm concerned that George will go the same way that RJ did.

These days I listen to so many podcasts and watch so many screencasts that I don't get to read as much. At the moment I'm reading some old SF pulp mags from 1965 that I picked up in a local second hand bookstore.

I agree that the last book of the Song of Ice and Fire wasn't the best. I consider it on-par with maybe the first or the fourth WoT book - pretty good, but still not great. I don't think George will go the same way that RJ did - the reasoning I read behind why he ended up breaking it into two books is simply the massiveness of it as he was writing it originally. He found he had so much to write about it that there was no way to logically fit them into one book, so he just split it apart, put certain characters into the first one, then kept working on the second one with the other characters.

It could simply be that, like me, you just didn't like the characters in the last book as much as the characters who are (presumably) going to be in the next book!

In re: complaints about the grittiness and unrealistically evil/bad characters, I don't really view that as a valid point. There's certainly a lot of bad crap going on, but conversely there's also a lot of good stuff. I'm not going to spoil anything, but I think just because a lot of bad stuff happens should not cause a bad review. If it's badly written, that's another story altogether, but if it's well-written and it happens to be about a lot of negative subjects, then so be it. If you don't like the subject, don't read it.

I have given up on Jordan some time ago, when I realized the series is not going anywhere (and considering the fact this ending you mentioned is the result of a new author taking over, I was correct).

When I got the impression SOIAF was going the same way I stopped reading it, and will hold on till the entire thing is over.

On the other hand, I enjoyed reading "Sword of truth" series, in which every book is a stand-alone, and the same goes for the "Mazalan book of the fallen" series.