Why are fantasy writers not finishing their series?- Patrick Rothfuss. The first two books of his Kingkiller “trilogy” were very well received. The first The Name of the Wind came out in 2007, the second The Wise Man’s Fear , in 2011.
The 'third" the The Doors of Stone was promised on a regular schedule. As of today, not only has The Doors of Stone not been released, there is solid evidence it never will be- In July 2020, Rothfuss’s editor and publisher Betsy Wollheim responded publicly on her Facebook account to an article speculating on reasons why The Doors of Stone , the concluding volume of the trilogy, had not been published,[17] saying she had “never seen a word of book three” and that she didn’t think Rothfuss had written anything since 2014… In December 2021, Rothfuss tweeted that he would “[s]hare a full chapter of Doors of Stone” if his charity reached a $333,333 fundraising goal.[20] Later that month he added more stretch goals, with the largest being for $666,666 to “assemble the Geek Glitterati equivalent of the Avengers and record [the full chapter] for you”. He noted that such a goal would take some time but said “I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get it done early next year. February at the latest.”[21] The chapter has not been released, with Rothfuss saying in April 2022 that the process was “moving more slowly than [he] would like.”[22]
What’s funny, or maybe sad, is that for a while he became very surly if you brought up that third book. Then, at some point, he seem to sort of embrace the joke. Now he just seems weary of the whole topic.
It’s fairly obvious from the second volume - one can argue from the first - that Rothfuss has no plot and no plan. He’s two thirds of the way through a trilogy and the story hasn’t actually started yet. He’ll never finish it because it can’t be finished.
Yeah, this is the answer. He wrote himself into a corner and has been living there for a few decades. When reading A Song of Fire and Ice I can at least see where it is headed and how things should shake out, specially after watching the show. With the Kingkiller Chronicles there is absolutely no hint of where the story might go, the damn king that is supposed to be killed is still unknown 2/3rds through the trilogy. He wrote two amazingly entertaining books that went nowhere and I doubt we’ll ever get more.
That said, I do not personally know Rothfuss therefore have nothing to say about him specifically, but there are many reasons why trilogies do not get finished (he would be far from the first), ranging from writer’s block to lack of rigid writing discipline to not having the thing plotted out in the first place.
You can always write yourself out of a corner. It’s writing. He can do anything. Someone else can show up at the tavern and tell us the story of why everything Kvothe has said so far is bullshit (which is probably true anyway), and restart the story from scratch. Or whatever. Our obviously unreliable narrator gives Rothfuss more freedom than most.
I think the real reason is just that he has a severe, possibly insurmountable case of writer’s block. He’s written almost nothing else in the meantime, so it doesn’t seem explicitly tied to the Kingkiller universe. Some authors, like Stephen King, seem incapable of not writing for an extended period of time. Rothfuss is not one of these people.
I’ve bitched about this series in several other threads, all of which had the same sort of plaintive, yet rueful bitch about the series. Rothfuss created powerful, overwhelming characters, and set up a great tragedy, but never seemed to figure out how such powerful characters would end up in the tragedy. Sure, we have hints that he’ll destroy himself out of both love and hate, but Rothfuss has spent so much time building up before the fall he’s in no position to finish the story in the format (framing narrative of 3 nights and physical format of 3 books) he stated originally.
Honestly, if I thought he had any desire to finish (distinct from writers block @Dr.Strangelove mentioned, I think he’s tired of writing, and made enough from the first two to go on to other passions), he could tell his fans it’ll be two books instead of a monster tome (Think “Too Green Angle Tower” which to finish Memory Sorrow and Thorn as a trilogy was huge as a paperback, but split into two releases for paperback) - and while doing so, break up the framing tale with a “current world” interruption - the spider-monsters, a bounty hunter following the bard, practically anything.
But again, I think he doesn’t care to keep going - it reminds me of a lot of TT-RPGs I’ve played (and occasionally run!) : you/they build a great setting, a solid intro, and know how it’s going to end, but you get tired trying to work out all the bits and niggles in the middle.
Yeah the first two were pretty good, and he wrote a couple of novelettes set in the universe. But yeah, it was all about the KINGkiller chronicles, and altho a couple people mentioned a king being killed, so far, it is all taking place years and tears later, or reminises.
R.S. Belcher wrote two urban fantasy novels I enjoyed, The Brotherhood of the Wheel (2017) and King of the Road (2018), and the story arc is clearly set up for at least a third novel; but afaik that’s it for the series.
I just know that when I finished the second book I thought there’s no way he’s finishing in just one more book. Of course we haven’t even seen that yet.
In theory in tbe UK a new 240 page book called The Narrow Road Between Desires comes out in mid-November It’s billed as a Kingkiller Chronicle Novella…
I’ll only believe it when I actually heft a copy in my hand though!
Think both he and Martin found that its a lot more fun being a famous fantasy writer, going to cons, doing charity events, etc. then it is actually sitting down and writing more books.
(agree with @Dr.Strangelove that the “writing himself into a corner” doesn’t really explain it. He has written himself into a corner, but there’s no law that says he has to wrap everything up in the next book, or even ever address the stuff in the framing story. Or if all else fails, its fantasy, just use some variation of “a wizard did it”.)
I don’t think it’s realistic to say he could just write anything for the third book and call it a day. It’s been a while since I thought about it, but I remember thinking there were solid clues about who the king was, what the underlying tragedy was, and how it played out in the wider world. He made a whole bunch of florid and pretty explicitly teasing promises about how the story was going to come together. I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who genuinely thinks it would be better for him to write another 600 pages of unrelated “a wizard did it” that doesn’t address that stuff, just so he can say the series is finished. He would be despised by people who treated him like a god. To the extent that those people are already mad at him, at least now he can say “I’m working on it.”
On the writer’s block front, Jasper Fforde is finally coming out with the second book of his Shades of Grey trilogy (titled Red Side Story) 15 years after the first one came out. Quoth the man himself:
I believe his next-and-possibly-final Thursday Next book Dark Reading Matter is also planned for release next year, 12 years after the last one came out. In between he’s written a number of books that were what I shall charitably call “less enthralling”.
That’s probably inevitable at this point. I haven’t followed any of the speculation or clues or anything, nor anything that Rothfuss has said about it. But there’s no way to ever satisfy fans that have had over a decade to dig up clues, intentional or not, and come up with endless fan theories.
Rothfuss has to give up something. He can’t make everyone happy. He could try to wrap up everything in one book, ignoring a bunch of subplots and wizarding away the various contradictions. Or he could say that this is really a 7-book series, pushing any problems into an indefinite future (and having the time to justify any contradictions as “well, you thought X happened, but what really happened was Y, and here’s why”). Or any of a bunch of other possibilities.
If he was driven to write, he’d be doing so. Yeah, not everyone is a King or Sanderson, but we’d be getting more than one novella (that was originally written in 2014) if Rothfuss really still had the motivation.
I do hope he’s not depressed or something. He used to do D&D with the Penny Arcade / Acquisitions Inc. crowd. I enjoyed him in that role (in fact I didn’t know anything of his books initially), but he just stopped at some point. Maybe it was for totally normal reasons, but I wonder if something has sapped his drive.
