I don't know if any thing I say could be construed as true spoilers. I don't have any information about, ok who is going to be in what book, or events that happen or what. But just be warned. I'll also be summarizing a scene from the aMoL reading. The scene has no character in it we have ever seen before, its a general prologue scene. That being said, you've been warned.
I'll try to leave as much personal info as possible out of it and just give you the facts (that I can remember)
Friday opened at 1pm with a skit that was supposed to summarize the books in one hour. The skit was very very funny. Jason Denzel (owner of dragonmount) was rand, Wilson Grooms was Tam, and the cast list was very very large. Much hilarity and mishaps followed. Two things to note, Brandon Sanderson played all the male Forsaken and did his own students. We were kinda worried he might fall and break a wrist or something. Leigh Butler (who was keeper of the faq for many years and does the wot reread on tor.com) played nynaeve. Moiraine was played by a girl that..well lets just say, according to the doctor today I'm 5'11.25'' tall and this girl was a good bit taller than me. It was surreal. There were lots of stories about RJ and different tangents that went on at the Con. Someone asked how RJ decided what animals would be Trollocs and how he designed them. Alan, his editorial assistant, said, well he just looked around the office. There were many things like that, which while they didn't give any insight to aMoL, were none the less, fascinating to hear and witness.
The Jordancon program guide had what I think will be the actual dust jacket cover blurb for book 12, The Gathering Storm. It could always change, but here it is:
Tarmon Gai'don the Last Battle, looms.
And mankind is not ready.
A Memory of Light was partially finished by Robert Jordan before his untimely passing in 2007. Brandon Sanderson, New York Times bestselling author of the Mistborn books, was chosen by Jordan's editor--his wife, Harriet McDougal--to complete the final book. The scope and size of the novel was such that it can not be contained in a single volume, and so Tor proudly presents A Memory of Light: Gathering Clouds as the first in a short sequence of novels that will complete the struggle against the Shadow, bringing to a close a journey begun almost twenty years ago and marking the conclusion of The Wheel of Time, the preeminent fantasy epic of our era.
In this epic novel, Robert Jordan's international bestselling series begins its dramatic conclusion. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, struggles to unite a fractured network of kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle. As he attempts to halt the Seanchan encroachment northward--wishing he could form at least a temporary truce with the invaders--his allies work in desperation to forestall the shadow that seems to be growing within the heart of the Dragon Reborn himself.
Egwene al'Vere, the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, is a captive of the White Tower and subject to the whims of their tyrannical leader. As days tick toward the Seanchan attack she knows is imminent, Egwene works to hold together the disparate factions of Aes Sedai while providing leadership in the face of increasing uncertainty and despair. Her fight will rpove the mettle of the Aes Sedai, and her conflict will decide the future of the White Tower--and therefore the world itself.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass. What was, what willbe, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.
Friday Night closed with a poker tournament that I did not go to because A. I suck at poker, B. I was staying at a different hotel, and C I was bloody tired. Saturday was the main day of the Con. There were a lot of WoT discussion panels, a panel with team Jordan and the "aMoL reading." The reading was touching to witness. About a month before Jordan died he started telling the entire aMoL plot to his close family. One night he started talking to his cousin Wilson and when Wilson realized what he was saying, he got someone to take notes and ran to Wal Mart to grab a tape recorder. The "reading" was Robert Jordan describing the first scene of the Prologue in his own words. It was recorded twenty days before his death. I will attempt to summarize it but my summary will suck compared to the real thing. This wasn't polished or him reading off a page. It was like telling a story around the campfire. People were crying. Anyways here it is.
There is a farmer. He's not a poor farmer or a rich one, but he is decently well to do. He's sitting on his porch looking out at the horizon. He sees a storm front consisting of silver and black clouds. Now most people, when they say they see silver and black clouds, they are really seeing dark dark gray. These clouds are REALLY silver and black. Besides the strange coloration, something else is wrong too. The farmer is a country man, he knows weather patterns, but he has never seen anything like this before. As he watches the clouds, thunder rolls in the distance. The thunder gets closer and closer, louder and louder, but the clouds stay right where they are in the distance. Finally the thunder recedes in the distance. The clouds begin to move closer and closer they move away, then come closer, move away then come closer. The thunder stays in the distance and never moves with the clouds.
About this time, a friend of the farmers, a smith and his wife from the nearby village, roll up in their wagon. The wagon has all manner of things tied to it, including livestock, with a cow trailing along behind it. The farmer asks the smith what he is doing, where is he going. The smith replies that he is going north, A storm is coming. The farmer is unnerved by this but says nothing. The smith says, "I want to give you some advise." The smith then goes on to tell the farmer that he knows he has a light forge and he is good enough to make small repairs and alterations. He says, take your very best scythe. Not your second or third best, it must be your very best scythe. Take off the handle and reforge it into a polearm. This will be your main weapon, it will serve you well to take horsemen out of the saddle. He then goes on to say, take your second or third best scythes and make swords out of them, after all a sword is little more than a scythe witha bit of wood to keep your hand from sliding onto the blade. He says kill your animals and sell the meat. There are many who will be willing to buy it in what is to come. The smith says he buried most of his tools and tells the farmer will to find them. The smith's wife hands down a basket full of eggs for the farmers wife and tells him where to find her best copper cookware. After this the smith and his wife take off. The farmer's wife comes out, and he hands her the eggs and mentions what was said. When he mentioned the copper ware, his wife drops the eggs in shock. She says, "I think we should listen to them." and goes inside to start packing. The farmer wanders to his farmyard bemused, but he is starting to get a bad feeling. He gathers his farmhands in and tells them to gather together the livestock and begin packing themselves. He then wanders into his shed and starts up his light forge. He takes down his best Scythe and begins hammering on it to take off the handle. He's hammering on it and the sound of the hammer is much louder than it should be. He pounds and the sound grows louder and louder. It sounds like the thunder from the storm. He continues hammering and he can swear that the sound changes. It sounds like words. Like someone is saying: "The Storm is coming."
The Storm Is Coming
After the reading there was a dinner break followed by the formal party, the "Cairhienin Ball" I did not attend as I was tired and I didnt' have anything to wear. just jeans and a t shirt. It looked like a lot of fun though. Sunday was mostly wrapping up. Brandon Sanderson had a meet and greet and a book signing, and there was the trivia contest I mentioned before.
I will try to put down every scrap of info I learned about aMoL and The Gathering Storm at the convention. First of all they have dropped the aMoL part 1,2, and 3 format. The Gathering Storm will be book 12, 13's title is TBA, and 14 will be either Tarmon Gai'don or A Memory of Light. The Gathering Storm will be released on November 3rd, the manuscript is IN. It's in copyedit right now. Notes on the manuscript. At last count at the Con (Brandon was actually finishing the last round of line edits in his hotel room) the book was 301,700 words long. I don't expect the final book to deviate much from that, perhaps 1k words one way or the other, but even that is doubtful. To put that in perspective, aCoS was approximately 295,000 words, and tEotW was 305,000. The recent KoD was 315,000. So we are getting a book that is roughly the size of tEotW. Slightly shorter than KoD but longer than any of the preceding four books. At last count there were a prologue and epilogue and 50 chapters. No contract has been signed to release the prologue early as an ebook but Harriet is looking into it, and that might happen. If it does it would probably come out around Aug or Sept. That's just my personal estimate btw. I figure they'd want to do marketing, sign a deal, and generally the prologues aren't ever released more than 2-3 months before publication. Brandon did some explaining on the structure of aMoL. He talked about how the beginning of the series was largely in parallel with the heroes all gathering back together. From tSR to about aCoS the series was expanding expanding expanding and then, there was largely a holding pattern and the series scope started to narrow slightly again beginning with KoD. He wanted us to think of the "aMoL story sequence" as a pyramid. Think of prologue of TGS as the bottom of the pyramid. The first two books will narrow the scope and converge the plotlines, and the top of the pyramid, or perhaps the sky above it, would be Tarmon Gai'don and the third book.
He talked about how the first two books are structured. He drew a bar graph with 4 parallel bars the same height. at the top of them was a rectangle spanning the whole graph. The bars are plotlines leading to tarmon gai'don, and I think more specificially, good guy plotlines. He drew 4 bars but said that were few more plotlines. Just a note when i say 'plotline' I don't mean say for instance, a single point of view like Rand or mat or Elayne or whatnot. Rather these plotline's are more like plot clusters or story arcs. For instance one of the looser clusters involves Bayle Doman/Egeanin, Elayne, Logain, The Black Tower, and miscellaneous. others would include Rand's cluster, him and everything around him in Arad Doman current, Mat and Perrin's clusters include their whole contingents, Egwene's includes the whole tower conflict, that kind of thing. Anyways Brandon drew a shape over the plotlines and was similar to the Tar Valon flame or Dragon's Fang. Basically it encompassed 2/3's of the first 3 lines and 1/3 or less of the other plotlines. He said for the major plotlines of TGS they would get advanced at least 2/3 of the way to Tarmon Gai'don. The others would get some time but it would be more of an intro chapter or two to get them in action, but not a lot of developement. In book 2 the plotlines that weren't major in book one will get the majority of screen time. The object is to get all the good guy plotlines in parallel for the offical start of Tarmon Gai'don at the beginning of book 3. I know all this talk about the LB is a bit nebulous. After all, we've been in the edges of it for several books now. I think he is referring to the official start, Trolloc hordes overrunning the borderlands, or perhaps the Day of Return and the breaking of the last 3 seals. But who knows right?
This isn't canonical information but it was implied that there would be around 3 major plotlines in TGS and Two major ones in book 2. This could be right or wrong, or partially right, partially wrong. I tend to believe the blurb as it makes sense from the way this is constructed. So the first book looks to be Egwene, Rand, and most likely (I want to stress most likely) one other major plotline. Harriet claims there are going to be two climaxes at the end of the first book. Brandon mentioned a total of around 6 different plotline climaxes throughout the entire sequence. Two things I learned of interest. There are two main considerations on how this thing is structured now that Tor and harriet made the "three book" decision. For One thing, Brandon originally started writing as if this would all be read at once. So there was originally pretty heavy foreshadowing about the Last Battle. Concerns that we would be able to analyze and postulate the ending or at least how Rand means to fight the Dark One and other facets about the Last Battle in the intervening two years between now and the final volume. So a lot of that foreshadowing is dialed back. The second issue in structure is book 2. They wanted to stress that there are at least two climaxes and a lot happens in TGS but they pulled out some of the original prologue and arranged the plotline sequence in such a way that book two will have at least 2 major plotlines of it's own and one, and maybe two "satisfactory climaxes" Brandon referenced CoT in trying to avoid middle book trilogy syndrome where the middle book is mostly advancing plots and details, but nothing much happens.
He has maybe 100,000 words written for book 2 at the moment, but its someone disorganized and cut up. he wrote 400,000 words, then cut out 275,000 or so words from that amount of manuscript, and crafted an additional 25,000 in scenes. This left the remaining manuscript someone piece meal, so he's going to have to do a lot of reconstruction on what's already been written but not included in book 1. Lets see, what else? The prologue for gathering storm will be 25,000 words long. Still long but not as long as the last 2 or 3 have been. that works out to 40-60 pages depending on font size. That's about half the original prologue. Estimated that RJ himself wrote about half of the TGS before death. Most of RJs work involved the prologue, Rand's scenes, and TG before he died. That's what he actually wrote in full prose form. The rest is outlines, notes, audio diction, and Brandon filling in the blanks. Brandon is trying to stick to the PoVs we've seen already for the most part, just because, I think, it helps define the character more so it will be easier to get the character 'right.' There's supposed to be 1 new PoV in TGS and 21 total. To put it in perspective, KoD had 27 PoVs and the preceding ones had more, back to the most PoVs ever, 47. TSR had 21, the same as TGS. If TGS has 3 major plotlines it would put it close to tSR in structure, albeit, quite a bit shorter. I'm trying to remember if I'm forgetting any information. Oh Brandon said he only created one character that will have screen top. He said he wanted to have just one character that was "his" in the series. This character won't be a "main" character but will be a middling or secondary character I believe is what Brandon said, and I don't think he will appear until book 2. It's unclear if this character was in RJ's notes without a name yet, or if the character just fulfills something that needed to be done in the plot, but wasn't nailed down yet.
This isn't from the con, but Brandon has told people at signing and a podcast that Mat and Perrin's groups will meet up in aMoL. He speculated this would happen around the 2/3 mark which would be around the end of book 13. All kinds of estimates have been made of the total length of the three books. Before Jordancon Brandon stated it would be at least 800k words. He said that TGS only represents about 1/3 (perhaps a little more) of the entire story though, so that could stretch to 850-900k words total. I hope that's true. I don't want book 2 to be tpod version 2.0 with 500 pages.
Brandon also wanted to caution readers that a thing or two that they have been eagerly awaiting won't happen in book 1. I personally think this may refer to the entire Moiraine rescue sequence being completed, but I could be wrong. Make of it what you will. Something amusing at the Con, Tom D. (president of Tor) was talking about how he wanted a 250k or 275k book (about the size of tDR to CoT) and that at 300k+ this book would be the largest ever. Someone corrected him that the longest ever was like 390k long (tSR). It was actually 393k, LoC was 384k, tFoH 354k, KoD 315, tEotW 305k. He then backtracked to say that 300 was the average, which is true in a way, more like the median, with 6 being longer and 6 being shorter. Lets see, you guys might have heard the "outrigger" novels mentioned before. Tom D. wants those published. I don't know if Brandon is especiallly keen ont he idea. From my understanding massive notes weren't really penned. The Seanchan culture city and geography is extremely well defined but RJ didn't work much on the plot, so it would be created almost whole sale. It would be set in Seanchan with mat and tuon, or so I hear. I'm not sure if an advance or contract has been signed yet but Tor really wants those books. $$$ Tor also wants the ebook prologue contract that simon and schuster have gotten the past 3 books or so, for obvious reasons.
I can't think of anything else aMoL related that I learned, if I think of it, I'll let you know.
~rhodric
