The Stormlight Archive

Stormlight Season is almost back upon us! Brandon wrote some of the prologue for Book 5 during the holiday break, and will start writing in full earnest in February if all goes well.

For anyone curious, Book 5 will have Szeth as the flashback character and Gavilar as the prologue character.

 

In another minor update, Knights of Woeful Truth is Brandon's frontrunner title for Book 5.



It came up when a fan asked him on Facebook about Knights of Withered Truth being the title, and this is Brandon's response. To be fair, I'm more of a fan of the fan-title than Brandon's suggestion, but I'm also willing to see what else Brandon and his team come up with when the book is closer to finished. I'm sure we'll be given a larger update on Monday or so, but I also wouldn't discount Brandon throwing us a curveball and posting an update beforehand. Regardless, I'll see y'all when the update comes!

 

Yup! Brandon HAS warned us that Book 5 may be pushed to 2024 if it needs time or extra work, but I believe he's working hard not to do that and to keep his November 2023 deadline. A WoT readthrough, ideally a Mistborn readthrough, and then another Stormlight readthrough will keep you busy for a LONG time!

 

For those who like previews and prerelease chapters, Brandon shared the first draft of the prologue of Stormlight 5 yesterday.

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/prologue-to-stormlight-5/

 

Not sure it really matters, but in a Q&A from last night, Brandon stated that Stormlight 5 was "almost assuredly" delayed until 2024. This makes sense, given that it's already July, and Sanderson is less than 10% through the book. I mentioned this on the other thread, but Stormlight being delayed would also explain why the Dark One novelization Brandon is coauthoring had a draft completed so soon, and why Skyward 4's revisions haven't started. Skyward 4, aka Defiant, was supposed to be a Spring 2023 book. However, with the major 2023 book being delayed, and four (well, five to six most likely*) other books coming out throughout the year, I can see Brandon pushing this one back for that November timeslot.

The reason behind this has changed since Brandon last mentioned delays, but I think both reasons are good. The first reason Stormlight was delayed was due to Mistborn 7 running long. Mistborn 7 is a finale to the Wax & Wayne tetralogy, and Brandon mentioned that he was spending more time with the book and its finale to make sure it wrapped everything up and gave us what we needed. (This included an extra 25k going into the book, so it's about 175k words long. For Harry Potter fans, that's a smidge longer than Half Blood Prince, but not as long as Goblet of Fire.) Brandon then said later that Mistborn 7 revisions going long would probably indicate that Stormlight 5 would be delayed, since he'd have to do a similar thing on a much larger scale. The second reason Brandon mentioned was in the stream last night, and it was talks with movie/tv people and companies, aka Hollywood. Netflix was mentioned by name! Brandon said that a lot of his time this year has been eaten up by meetings with them; there were a lot more than usual to begin with, but the Kickstarter kicked it into overdrive, and a good chunk of Brandon's writing time has been taken up by meetings. He hopes that things will calm down by the end of the year or for next year, but we'll see. So, you've got one book going long, 5-6 other books that need revisions of various lengths, meetings that are taking up your writing time, and a finale to your most popular series that needs to be perfect - I can understand the 'almost assuredly" delaying of that book!

Now, the real question is when the book will come out. We know it's most likely 2024, but that doesn't tell us when. The way I see it, Brandon has two choices. The first is to drop the book as soon as it's ready. I can imagine that being as early as May 2024, with my personal date being May 16. I think this would be a nice homage to the release of Words of Radiance in March 2014, a little over ten years ago that year. The other, more likely option for Brandon and crew is to release the book November 2024 during that year's Dragonsteel Mini-Con. A Stormlight book releasing during the con would gather a whole slew of fans who may not come out otherwise, and it would be just the event that the Mini-Con needs. However, that might mean asking Tor to wait on the book, something they're not usually inclined to do with a Brandon Sanderson story. (Although, if Brandon could simply push the release date back a year when delaying the book, he may have earned himself that wiggle-room.) 2024 could see the releases of the next Skyward book post-Defiant and possibly The Apocalypse Guard as well. Those would definitely go a long way in filling out the year.

*Again, Secret Projects 1-4, Defiant, and Dark One's novelization. And that's not counting a potential sequel to Lux or the release of Dragonsteel Prime with the WoR Leatherbound Kickstarter next year.

 

Brandon posted the first of hopefully quite a few Stormlight 5 updates, and it's a fun one. He lays out the delays and reasons for them, gives us a nice (if slightly spoilery) piece of concept art, and talks a little about the writing so far and how he plans to tackle it going forward (which is also slightly spoilery). Check out the written or visual version at y'all's leisure.

Spoiler: Minor Pre-Book 3 Spoilers

 

There's a Kickstarter for some Stormlight Archive character mini-figurines or whatnot going on right now! These aren't my cup of tea, but as of anything with Brandon's name on it recently, this Kickstarter obliterated its target goal. Check it out!
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ef=nav_search&result=project&term=Stormlight

 

From Brotherwise Games, Stormlight Pen & Paper RPG coming in 2024!

So, in 2024 we'll see:
The shipping of Words of Radiance Leatherbound (if they can't get it by Winter 2023, which would make sense due to how many people will probably want a copy)
Stormlight TTRPG
Stormlight Book 5

 

Minor updates, but now in addition to Brandon's reading of the prologue to Stormlight 5, he's read Kaladin's first chapter at FanX and Szeth's first flashback at NYCC. There's probably video footage of both - I know that Brandon mentioned he was recording the NYCC stream for his own channel - so I'll link that video when it comes out, but for now all we have a transcription of Kaladin's channel from FanX.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/503-fanx-2022/

 

Stormlight 5's book title will most likely be Knights of Wind and Truth