Fall of the Dragon

Robert Jordan's blog

Give me your trust said the Aes Sedai
On my shoulders I support the sky
Trust me to know and to do what is best
And I will take care of the rest

But trust is the color of a dark seed growing
Trust is the color of a heart´s blood flowing
Trust is the color of a soul´s last breath
Trust is the color of death...

Give me your trust said the queen high on her throne
For I must bear the burden all alone
Trust me to lead, and to judge, and to rule
And no man will think you a fool

But trust is the sound of a gravedog's bark
Trust is the sound of betrayal in the dark
Trust is the sound of a soul´s last breath
Trust is the sound of death...

Robert Jordan passed away Sunday, September 16, 2007 from complications arising from cardiac amyloidosis. I had prayed earnestly that he would hurry up his writing and, like, Stephen King, dodge the call of the Grim Reaper before he finished his magnum opus, in Jordan's case the Wheel of Time series. For Stephen King, he got a two-minute warning after his accident in 1999, and maybe he would have died before he finished the saga of Roland Deschain and the Dark Tower. But survive he did, and at least the fans were appeased.

For all its twists and turns, and essentially poor pacing from the seventh book (A Crown of Swords) to the eleventh (Knife of Dreams) the first six books of the Wheel of Time stand out as classics of high fantasy. I liked Terry Brooks, David Eddings, and Katherine Kurtz, and of course the maestro Tolkien himself, but Jordan rolled all of them up and put them together in his work.

I trust that his estate would commission a good writer to finish the last book --- he did pass on most of the plot developments to his wife and family before he died. Tor Books would have had to invent a new binding system to reportedly accommodate that monster of the last book.

Perhaps it's only apropos that he died before he finished the book - Stephen King seemed to be so conscious of his mortality that he had major plot holes in the last book of the Dark Tower. I would have been the first to scream "Blood and bloody ashes!" should that happen to Jordan's legacy. Now, his memory lives on and we are left to wonder what would have been.

Rest in peace, RJ.

Willing Exile: Waiting on Robert Jordan