The third book in Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle series has a lot of ground to cover. When’s Kvothe gonna kill that king, huh?
When it comes to long-running fantasy series with highly anticipated sequels in the pipeline, it’s hard to find a more popular tale than A Song of Ice and Fire The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss. When the first book, The Name of the Wind, came out in 2007, it made major waves with both fans and critics. That momentum only built when its follow-up, The Wise Man’s Fear, hit shelves four years later in 2011. Yet after that, the years have whiled on, with anticipation and reaching the sort of height that few stories outside Westeros ever see.
With around six months to go until the 10-year anniversary of The Wise Man’s Fear, fans have had plenty of time to spend dreaming about how the epic saga will end. And while we may still not have any release date (the last update was the following video from April 2020, when Rothfuss said the novel was still underway), we still have our dreams and fan theories.
The Kingkiller Chronicle follows Kvothe, a wizard prodigy who has gone into hiding as a humble inn keeper. When a famed chronicler comes to Kvothe’s inn, he decides to tell his life story in his own words — recounting adventures like meeting the immortal Fae Felurian, training with the renowned Adem mercenaries, and even facing down a dragon. Rothfuss tells the story with fantastic flourishes, subverting tropes and doing all sorts of things that catch fantasy fans hook, line and sinker.
Although the third (and presumably final) book, tentatively titled The Doors of Stone, hasn’t yet arrived, with each day that passes, we get one day closer to having the completed Kingkiller Chronicle on our shelves. For now, let’s not focus on the long wait, or the controversies. Let’s take a few minutes to dream about what long-foreshadowed events might await us in The Kingkiller Chronicle’s epic conclusion.
