Brandon Sanderson, the co-author of The Wheel of Time and a venerated voice in high fantasy literature, had a surprising announcement for his fans yesterday that almost broke the internet.
The author of acclaimed and best-selling fantasy sagas such as Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive has been busy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most Sanderson fans will probably jump at the opportunity to tell you that the writer is something of a workaholic when it comes to outputting new novels, though what he’s done in the past couple of years baffles even the most hardworking people in the entertainment industry.
As it turned out, Sanderson announced via a new YouTube video that alongside Rhythm of War, Skyward, and Wax and Wayne 4, he’s been working on not one, not two, but five secret full-length novels.
Sanderson also announced a Kickstarter to fund the release of four of these novels in 2023, along with a ton of other merchandise in the Cosmere universe. The campaign, which was supposed to run for 30 days with a goal of garnering $1 million, has managed to earn a record-shattering $15 million in the first 24 hours.
That in itself speaks volumes about the kind of reach Sanderson has among the book-reading speculative fiction community. And it’ll be interesting to see what the campaign ends up through its run.
Sanderson originally rose to prominence by penning the last three books in The Wheel of Time saga after author Robert Jordan succumbed to illness in 2007. Since then, the writer’s work in the fantasy genre has only grown in popularity, and we can’t wait to see him unveil each of these four novels in 2023.