Thread by @dragonmount

Today’s the 8 year anniversary of the release of A Memory of Light, the 14th and concluding volume in The Wheel of Time.

8 years since it ended. Wow. Although we all know there are no endings to the turning of the WoT!

(Thread)

Info:
dragonmount.com/Books/Memory_o…

#twitteroftime

The title to this book was one RobertJordan thought of when he was finishing up edits on Knife of Dreams. He never explained the exact meaning although @BrandSanderson would later offer his version of it.

The closing epigraph of the book is one of my favorites:

“He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.”

There’s a story behind that quote.

Robert Jordan came up with that wind quote. He and Harriet were traveling to New York to meet with their publisher @torbooks. He shared the quote with Harriet, who was struck by it & really loved it.

The quote referred to Rand, of course, but after RJ died, it spoke more to Harriet about her husband than it did about the character. The quote was included in RJ’s prayer card from his funeral. I still have one.

My experience of the final 3 WoT books was very different from most people’s. With each successive book I had a more impactful role in its development. I’m officially credited as a beta reader for each of them but for the final book especially it extended beyond that.

Brandon and I had become good friends & we chatted somewhat often about the story. There were aspects of the final book that frustrated him at the time and we’d talk through it. To this day, I think of the last book more in terms of my involvement than I do with the actual story.

But I will never forget the day that I read the End. It was just a MS word document. Long before publication. I already knew how everything ended. I helped helped develop some of those ideas. But I sat down in a comfy room and read the last 200 pages or so.

I published an article on @tordotcom called “Dear Robert Jordan” where I wrote a letter to RJ about my experience of reading his final book. You can read it here:

tor.com/2012/09/24/qde…

Our community was blessed when we got Brandon to finish the series. Although they never met each other, I like to think Robert Jordan would’ve approved of the effort, love, and talent Brandon brought the series.