Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

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.

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.

Russia has managed to destroy its only manned space platform launch facility at Baikonur. The backwash from a Soyuz MS-28 launch appears to have obliterated the service platform, rendering it un-usable. They might not be able to repair it for 2+ years.

Ukraine has lost additional territory to the SE of Pokrovsk in the pocket, but the fighting in the urban areas of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad has resulted in localised Ukrainian success: around 12 square kilometres has been regained by Ukraine in the past 48 hours. However, combat intensity remains high and Russia is sending in additional reinforcements.

Russia has sent troops to try to outflank Vovchansk on the northern edge of Kharkiv Oblast from the SW. This appears to have involved Russian forces advancing through marshland before the ground has fully frozen under overwatch from Ukrainian drones, with predictably negative results. Ukrainian forces in Vovchansk continue to hold the line. There seems to be anger that Russia is trying to advance in this sector when those troops could go to Pokrovsk instead where every Russian on the line counts.

A joint EU cyber-operations unit is apparently being proposed by various EU countries, particularly France, Italy and allied nations like the UK. The unit would be authorised to conduct offensive cyber-operations against Russian and possibly "other" state actors taking hostile action against them.

Ukrainian drones have struck multiple facilities used by the Chechen Akhmat unit, including in Grozny itself.

Turkey has offered to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine to police a post-peace deal. Turkey has indicated it might be the only NATO nation acceptable to Putin to do so.

Ukraine has receive DITA self-propelled howitzers from the Czech Republic. DITA is one of the most advanced modern artillery systems with a 40km range.

Russia tried to launch a large ballistic missile as part of a test at Orenburg, but it exploded on the launch platform.

Two Russian shadow fleet tankers are burning in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey. One was apparently hit by sea drones, unclear about the other one.

Ukraine has retaken Ivanivka in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after heavy fighting.

One of the two damaged shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea was hit a second time.

Russia is assigning $166 billion to defence in its 2026 budget, a post-Soviet record.

An oil loading terminal near Novorossiysk has been badly hit and is out of action.

Heavy drone strikes on Russian power distribution nodes in both Kursk and Belgorod oblasts, plunging large areas into darkness.

Heavy fighting continues in Pokrovsk, with a lot of drone activity on both sides.

A third shadow fleet vessel has been hit, this time off the coast of Senegal (!).

Kushner looks like he's going to be eaten alive by Putin.

A drone that overflew Ukraine and entered Moldovan territory crashed in Chișinău. The drone was picked up and taken to the Russian Embassy. The Russian Ambassador seemed genuinely bewildered as he spouted some nonsense lines about it.

Some reports that the Mirage-2000 is outperforming the F-16 in the role of Ukrainian drone interceptor.

The Russian State Railway is close to financial collapse, with its debts rising to $51 billion. The problem is that the Russian Central Bank can't work out how to afford it without worsening inflation.

The cost of Chinese exports to Russia have almost doubled in the last year, whilst, insanely, the cost of those non-sanctioned European goods has increased by only 9%.

Armenia says it has "effectively" left the CSTO, since Russia did not fulfil the terms of the treaty by helping Armenia against Azerbaijan's attack last year. Entertainingly, Azerbaijan also seems lukewarm on its continued membership, and Tajikistan has had words about Russia's failure to help them against Tajikistan's incursions a few years ago.

Calls to fire Witkoff are growing behind the scenes, including from Republicans, with Rubio apparently not opposed to the idea and he may be winning Vance around, with the carrot of possibly replacing Witkoff with Vance's friend and ally Dan Driscoll. Driscoll is regarded as "warmer" towards Ukraine than Witkoff but not as much as Kellogg. Driscoll has also been willing to talk to Zelensky in person (Witkoff has never been to Kyiv, despite multiple flights to Moscow). Driscoll calls himself a "realist" and has reportedly told Zelensky that the US cannot provide Kyiv with Patriot missiles and other munitions at the pace needed to deal with this intensity of fighting (experts are somewhat divided on this assessment), whilst retaining enough stocks to act as a deterrent in the Pacific. However, Driscoll has praised Ukraine's drone industry and also its ability to adapt and improve US weapons in combat conditions, and argued that the US should leverage Ukraine's massive weapons manufacturing capability to help with its own stocks once the fighting is concluded. Ukraine's ability to build at least 1.5 million drones a year (last year's figure, they will smash that this year with at least 3 million) dwarfs that of the entire United States, which is insane.

Russia has managed to blow up one of its own apartment buildings in Novorossiysk with a mis-fired anti-aircraft missile, which flew out of control.

Ukraine has also hit the Taganrog airfield, destroying an experimental Russian AWACS aircraft equipped with a laser.

A large number of balloons carrying contraband have crossed into Lithuanian airspace from Belarus.