Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Yup, the Kupyansk operation now seems to be confirmed. A major success from the look of it. And they're also still holding onto Pokrovsk despite Russian reinforcements pouring in.

A Turkish ship in Odesa port has been hit by a Russian drone.

Ukrainian drones have started hitting Russian oil platforms in the Caspian Sea. Two waves of attacks in the last week appear to have disabled several platforms.

Hegseth and Driscoll seem to have had a falling out, with Driscoll sidelined from recent discussions.

Ukraine has hoisted its flag again (briefly) in north-central Pokrovsk, confirming they still hold the north of the city, above the rail line. Russia has not been able to penetrate past the rail line for something like eight days so far, so interesting to see if Ukraine can hold that line into the New Year. Ukraine has withdrawn some troops SE of the city whose position was no longer tenable. Situation remains tense.

Ukraine has successfully retaken a large part of north-western Kupyansk.

The Ukrainians are also advancing back to the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk-Dnipro border. One Ukrainian unit suffered heavy casualties so the 92nd Brigade was rotated in and destroyed the Russian attackers in several days of furious fighting, with possibly 700 Russian casualties which would be a huge loss if that was really in a few days.

Russia has taken additional territory near Siversk, but Ukrtaine has counter-attacked to the north-west and retaken Stavky.

Russia is starting to send units into the far south-eastern parts of Kostiantynivka (prewar pop. 67,000). This will be the next big urban fight. 

A Russian Defence Ministry An-22 has crashed near Moscow.

Tentative claims that Ukraine has recaptured around 13 square kilometres of Pokrovsk over the last 24-72 hours, out of around 30 square kilometres for the town in total.

Some Russian channels claiming over 300 Ukrainian drones attacking targets across Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod, which if true would be the largest number to date.

First one spotted in the wild.

It's basically just Erikson's old world map that's been colourised seemingly without regard for any of the actual maps we've seen in the books, to the point where Quon Tali looks crazy and Stratem is just a bump on the bottom of Korelri (where the heck is the Sea of Chimes?). Genostel is also right off the coast of Genabackis and Jacuruku looks a bit weird. Drift Avalii is also about twenty times bigger than the book suggests it is.

I think this is more of a crazy map people in the world might have access to than necessary a 100% accurate one. Again.

Better shot.

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.