The Wheel Has Stopped

I have read quite a few fantasy novels, but I've never tried out the well-known Robert Jordan series The Wheel of Time. Though it had been suggested to me by some, others warned me that it started to meander a bit in the later books. Ultimately, I decided that I was stuck waiting in the midst of too many other unfinished series (A Song of Ice and Fire, The Kingdom of Thorn and Bone, whatever Terry Brooks is writing at the moment, and up until recently, Harry Potter). I was going to wait until the tale was complete, and then give it a crack.

Now the news has come that it never will be. Not by Robert Jordan, at least. He died on Sunday of cardiac amyloidosis, a rare disease with a poor prognosis for those diagnosed with it.

Since I've had one eye on the books for a while, I'd been aware of Jordan's condition since not long after he was diagnosed early last year. It's been a very weird situation for his fans.

On the one hand, the man was dying of a terminal disease. One wants to be respectful of him and his family, and not be a complete bastard.

On the other hand, the author had cultivated what essentially was another family -- and a very large one -- who can't be thought completely unreasonable in wanting their beloved series of books finished.

When diagnosed with the condition, which even with treatment offers a typical life expectancy of about four years, Robert Jordan scoffed it off. "That's just the average," he said, and he claimed he'd live 30 more years and write the whole time because he still had other stories to tell. And on the one hand, who could fault a person facing a terminal disease for wanting to keep a positive attitude!

But on the other, with just one book to go in a twelve book series, how could you not step to it?

I think no matter whether you're looking at this from the author's perspective or a fan's perspective, there's a good measure of selfishness.

Now the weirdness of the situation will transform. Robert Jordan did say in at last one interview he gave last year that he had confided enough details of the final book to his family that "someone" could finish the book after his death, should it come to that. So now rabid fans will have to walk the line between trying to be respectful of a grieving family, while waiting on pins and needles to know if the series is ever going to be finished.

And if it is finished by someone else (I for one have to wager heavily that it will be), then there will almost surely be debate about the last book. Will it be "good enough?" Will the last half or two-thirds of the final book (or whatever it amounts to being) really be "what Robert Jordan would have wanted?" Will it be satisfying to have the end if it's not really the end, in the author's own voice? And would it be disrespectful of the late author to say that it isn't? Or worse, if it is?

I'm somewhat reminded of the day the news hit that Stephen King had nearly been killed in that automobile accident, and how for a short flash of time, his fans had to wonder if he would never finish The Dark Tower series. But this time the scythe has fallen the other way.

Again, all of this comes from the detached perspective of someone who has not yet read the books, nor is part of the family who has now lost a member. It's easy to sit and think about the situation intellectually from that standpoint. But I am curious to see what happens with that final, unfinished book.