'Kingkiller Chronicle' Book 3 Release Date Sometime 'Before Heat Death of the Universe,' Rothfuss Series Gets New Graphic Novel

Kingkiller Chronicle author hasn't posted to his blog since the final days of his annual Worldbuilders 2018 fundraiser, which raised more than a million dollars for Heifer International, but offered an update on his creative endeavors in a post earlier this week.

While Rothfuss didn't specifically address the third book in his Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy—a sequel to 2007's The Name of the Wind and 2011's The Wise Man's Fear currently titled The Doors of Stone—he did describe how he's "getting my literal and figurative house in order so that I can go back to getting more creative work done."

"I have a couple ongoing projects that I'd *really* like to finish before the heat death of the universe," Rothfuss wrote.

In addition to Kingkiller Chronicle Book 3, one of those projects is a graphic novel with frequent Rothfuss collaborator, artist Nate Taylor. Rothfuss announced his collaboration with Taylor would be a Kickstarter project, to be launched sometime later in 2019. For now, he's looking for a colorist for the graphic novel, appending a job description to the blog post.

"Drop us a line if you'd like to come and make something beautiful," Rothfuss wrote. "For the rest of you, I'm so excited to show you all the various delightful things I plan on finishing soon."

Heya everybody,

I'm looking for a colorist for a comic project I'm working on with Nate Taylor (@MajorSheep.)

Details on the blog:https://t.co/rtS1Un6zJD

If you know someone who might be interested, or want to help boost our signal, feel free to share the link around. pic.twitter.com/3DBsL7DS1a

— Pat Rothfuss (@PatrickRothfuss) February 27, 2019

While Rothfuss didn't attach a name to the graphic novel project or describe what it will be about, his replies in the comment field suggest it will focus on one of the most enigmatic stories from the ancient history of The Kingkiller Chronicle, involving characters likely to play an important role in Book 3, The Doors of Stone.

When one commenter shared their excitement, conspicuously highlighting specific words in their comment with all-capital lettering, Rothfuss acknowledged the hints, responding, "Heh. Yeah. I've talked about it here and there for a long time now… A lot of folks have already heard of it…"

Those capitalized words to which Rothfuss was responding? THE BOY WHO LOVED THE MOON.

While Rothfuss didn't name the project in his latest blog post, he described the graphic novel to ScienceFiction.com in December, 2018 by saying, "I'm working on a comic book with my friend Nate Taylor to do an illustrated version of the full story of The Boy That Loved the Moon."

There's a character in The Kingkiller Chronicle who fits that description, but it requires a deep dive into the series' fictional history, thousands of years before Chronicle protagonist Kvothe attends the magical University and seeks revenge for the murder of his parents by the mysterious Chandrian. Kvothe hears the story of Jax around a campfire in The Wise Man's Fear.

Kingkiller-Chronicles-1024x786
The UK covers for the first two books in Patrick Rothfuss' "The Kingkiller Chronicle." Gollancz Books

Jax is a young boy who lives in a "broken house" and is visited by a tinker, who gives him a pair of glasses through which he can see the moon and stars. Jax takes the tinker's things and leaves the visitor behind to fix the house. Jax follows the moon, in the long-ago days when the moon of Temerant was always full, and eventually falls in love with it. Just when he's run out of provisions, Jax meets an old man sitting at the mouth of a cave. As Jax pursued the moon, this man was chasing the wind. The man helps Jax open the tinker's pack he couldn't unknot. Inside is a bent piece of wood that unfolds into a house, into which Jax lures the moon with a flute.

The story is seen by Kingkiller Chronicle readers as an allegorical skeleton key for unlocking some of the most consequential open questions in the series. The true identity of Jax, the tinker and the old man are hotly debated amongst fans, with various characters from the ancient history of the Kingkiller Chronicle sized up against the fable-like tale. It likely has something to do with the ancient Creation War, begun by Jax (instead called Iax by a Kingkiller Chronicle character describing the war's history) when he stole the moon and pulled it from the mortal realm into a separate plane of existence called the Fae. The aftermath of that decision shaped some of the most dangerous figures in The Kingkiller Chronicle, including the Chandrian and an evil, seemingly omniscient being known as the Cthaeh.

A graphic novel retelling of the Jax story isn't likely to provide definitive answers to the ambiguities and different perspectives we've heard from the fictional history of The Kingkiller Chronicle. Rothfuss often plays with the mutable nature of storytelling—where truth and fact are very different things—so the upcoming graphic novel is likely to produce as many new questions as answers. Either way, the mythology of The Kingkiller Chronicle will deepen in 2019.

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