[Gabriele]

So maybe, with a lot of luck, we'll get Winds of Winter and Endlords in 2015. That would be great.

BTW Do you have any idea if that's going to be the final volume (it was planned as 5 books, I think, but she said somewhere it could be 6).

[Werthead]

I think the last word was that it was going to be 6, but it wasn't set in stone. After such a long wait, it'd be good if it as a huge book that wrapped things up altogether. Having to wait again until 2020 or thereabouts (21 years after the first book came out) for the finale would be annoying given her lack of status updates.

[Gabriele]

I hope you are right. One big whopper and be done with it would be nice.

I can deal with the waiting (at least I try to ) but I'd really like some updates, like Martin does. In case of Jones I was wondering if she's still alive, pulling a Rawn on us, or whatever, so the update is really appreciated.

[Lycaenion]

Gabriele, on 06 March 2014 - 06:21 PM, said:

I hope you are right. One big whopper and be done with it would be nice.

I can deal with the waiting (at least I try to ) but I'd really like some updates, like Martin does. In case of Jones I was wondering if she's still alive, pulling a Rawn on us, or whatever, so the update is really appreciated.

Yeah, I was immediately excited again when I saw that update.

[Werthead]

Slightly behind schedule, Endlords was completed today.

It's probably a while before publication, but the hard part is over.

[Werthead]

Tor Books have - in my view unwisely - decided not to publish the last two volumes of J.V. Jones's long-gestating Sword of Shadows series. Jones completed the penultimate novel, Endlords, early this year and has since been working on the final book, A Sword Named Loss.

The decision is not altogether surprising, as the first three books in the series - A Cavern of Black Ice (1999), A Fortress of Grey Ice (2002), A Sword from Red Ice (2007) and Watcher of the Dead (2010) - had been published a significant amount of time ago and the series had gone on hiatus whilst the author battled a large number of problems that had destroyed her writing time. Work on the series resumed several years ago, but at a slow pace as the author had a day job. Once she was able to work on the book full-time, Endlords was concluded relatively quickly, and she hosted an AMA here on r/fantasy earlier this year.

However, Tor themselves have form for resuming series that had spent many years on hiatus, picking up George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series after almost a decade on ice in 2008, and publishing the concluding volume of David Keck's Tales of Durand sequence over a decade after the publication of the second volume.

In addition to the completed Endlords and in-progress A Sword Named Loss, Jones was also able to offer Tor the reprint rights to the completed, million-plus-selling, Robert Jordan-blurbed Book of Words trilogy, but it seems they were not interested.

Somewhat bafflingly, Tor also suggested that "the market for the style of fantasy" had moved on, which I'm sure will be news to the likes of Joe Abercrombie, James Islington, Mark Lawrence, Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson (who just had a new fantasy novel published by Tor!) and George R.R. Martin.

Jones has not yet heard back from her British publishers, Orbit UK, but I would not be surprised if they took a similar tack to Tor.

The good news is that it sounds like Tor will not be contesting a return of the rights of the existing books to Jones, so she will be able to self-reprint the existing books and publish Endlords for the first time, probably much faster than if she'd had to wait for Tor to find a slot in their schedule for her.

[Abyss]

Werthead, on 03 December 2025 - 11:17 PM, said:

...
Somewhat bafflingly, Tor also suggested that "the market for the style of fantasy" had moved on, which I'm sure will be news to the likes of Joe Abercrombie, James Islington, Mark Lawrence, Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson (who just had a new fantasy novel published by Tor!) and George R.R. Martin....

I replied on Reddit but it's more fun to chat w you here....


Tor is probably just making shit up to justify a financial decision to cut loose an author who they calculate wouldn't make them much money. Reprint rights aren't worth that much on a series that - i vaguely recall - only did middle numbers when it was actively being published. They would have to market the hell out of the whole thing with appropriate print run to even have a chance of making a big deal out of Endlords. I'm pretty sure they (think that they) have other books/authors in the tank that are better bets.

The analogy you make is interesting. I read the first three Sword books, tried Barbed Coil and The Butcher Boy and bounced off both. I don't think you can look at The Devils, The Book That Wouldn't Burn, or No Life Forsaken and put anything JVJ has written in the same subcategory or drawing the same audience. Maybe just maybe Hobb at a stretch. Jones' books, the ones i read, were long drawn out low action high angst high inner monologue slogfeste slow builds to a single big finale that relied more on inner turmoil than swords stabbing and magic exploding. There are people who love that style but they're not the ones reading The Devils ( that's a massive generalization to make a point and of course people can and do like more than one thing).




Also also aside from GRRM who is his own special/stupid case, because money, all of the others produce a book at least every three years or so. She did that, but the publisher in their fiscally based wisdom likely has doubt she will resume.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 04 December 2025 - 03:44 PM, said:

Jones' books, the ones i read, were long drawn out low action high angst high inner monologue slogfeste slow builds to a single big finale that relied more on inner turmoil than swords stabbing and magic exploding. There are people who love that style but they're not the ones reading The Devils ( that's a massive generalization to make a point and of course people can and do like more than one thing).

100% my same take, and I only read the first one...but yeah it was a slog, and it was a grim slog that seems like it abhorred hope...putting it in the category of people like Abercrombie and Lawrence is just wrong. They are completely different types of novels. And TOR makes a fair point, not a lot of people ARE reading or writing the type of book Jones is putting out. That doesn't mean there is NO audience, but the audience is probably pretty minimal, so business decision is business decision.

And frankly in this day and age she can 100% self-pub so her readers can get the ending.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 04 December 2025 - 04:49 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 December 2025 - 03:44 PM, said:

Jones' books, the ones i read, were long drawn out low action high angst high inner monologue slogfeste slow builds to a single big finale that relied more on inner turmoil than swords stabbing and magic exploding. There are people who love that style but they're not the ones reading The Devils ( that's a massive generalization to make a point and of course people can and do like more than one thing).

100% my same take, and I only read the first one...but yeah it was a slog, and it was a grim slog that seems like it abhorred hope...putting it in the category of people like Abercrombie and Lawrence is just wrong. They are completely different types of novels. And TOR makes a fair point, not a lot of people ARE reading or writing the type of book Jones is putting out. That doesn't mean there is NO audience, but the audience is probably pretty minimal, so business decision is business decision.

And frankly in this day and age she can 100% self-pub so her readers can get the ending.

And frankly, if she can, and does, execute on the self-publishing thing, all power to her and i hope she breaks even and better. There are authors dropped by their publishers (Bakker, Thurman), who say they'll do this and instead more or less disappear, and others like Michelle West who make it work somehow. It's a hell of a comeback story in the fantasy lit world if she makes it work.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 04 December 2025 - 05:54 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 04 December 2025 - 04:49 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 December 2025 - 03:44 PM, said:

Jones' books, the ones i read, were long drawn out low action high angst high inner monologue slogfeste slow builds to a single big finale that relied more on inner turmoil than swords stabbing and magic exploding. There are people who love that style but they're not the ones reading The Devils ( that's a massive generalization to make a point and of course people can and do like more than one thing).

100% my same take, and I only read the first one...but yeah it was a slog, and it was a grim slog that seems like it abhorred hope...putting it in the category of people like Abercrombie and Lawrence is just wrong. They are completely different types of novels. And TOR makes a fair point, not a lot of people ARE reading or writing the type of book Jones is putting out. That doesn't mean there is NO audience, but the audience is probably pretty minimal, so business decision is business decision.

And frankly in this day and age she can 100% self-pub so her readers can get the ending.

And frankly, if she can, and does, execute on the self-publishing thing, all power to her and i hope she breaks even and better. There are authors dropped by their publishers (Bakker, Thurman), who say they'll do this and instead more or less disappear, and others like Michelle West who make it work somehow. It's a hell of a comeback story in the fantasy lit world if she makes it work.

Wanna know something cool about West too? She not only made sure to hire Jody Lee for the cover art of the books she's doing herself, she had them printed through the Amazon system for Trade Paperbacks at the top tier of what they offer and I have a copy of the first AND second one in the concluding quadrilogy, and they are GORGEOUS with nice buttery soft pages and a study cover...like she's 100% delivered two books that look like they were TradPubbed, perhaps even better. So it's 100% possible.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 04 December 2025 - 06:39 PM

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 04 December 2025 - 06:38 PM, said:

...
Wanna know something cool about West too? She not only made sure to hire Jody Lee for the cover art of the books she's doing herself, she had them printed through the Amazon system for Trade Paperbacks at the top tier of what they offer and I have a copy of the first AND second one in the concluding quadrilogy, and they are GORGEOUS with nice buttery soft pages and a study cover...like she's 100% delivered two books that look like they were TradPubbed, perhaps even better. So it's 100% possible.

She isn't the bestest example because her 'Michelle Sagara' books continue to be published so the break was not as complete as Jones or others, but however badly i bounced off THE SUN SWORD there is no denying her talent or work ethic or persistence.

[Werthead]

Fun fact: one of the reasons both the publishers and industry watchers at the time thought that Steven Erikson took off in the UK so fast was JV Jones' cover quote for Gardens of the Moon, and her glowing review of the book in SFX Magazine. The Stephen Donaldson quote was a bigger deal in the US, but Donaldson has never been that big in the UK, whilst Jones was very hot at that particular moment (1999). That's paying it forward as it was Robert Jordan's glowing cover quote was attributed for the success of Jones' first trilogy.