Brace yourselves, fantasy fans, because the fine people at Tor Books have decided to split the late Robert Jordan's final work into three pieces.

The three releases combined make up A Memory of Light, the conclusion to Jordan’s bestselling fantasy series The Wheel of Time. A Memory of Light was partially written by Jordan before his death, and is being completed by Brandon Sanderson (with the blessing of Jordan's wife/editor Harriet McDougal). The three "volumes" will be released over a two-year period, with the first going on sale on November 3, 2009.

Unfortunately, while they are referring to A Memory of Light as a single "book", and the three combined sections seem to tell as single story, I'm not getting the impression that will be reflected in the prices of the individual volumes. I don't see an Amazon page up for the standard release of the first volume yet, but they have posted a price for the audiobook edition: a wallet-gouging $40.84, marked down from $59.99.

Now, I'm not a Jordan fan, so I can't claim to care about this personally, but my heart goes out to his readers. I'm hoping I'm wrong and the books are given an appropriately low cover price (say, ten to fourteen dollars, tops), because it seems remarkably unfair to ask readers who have already made a significant emotional and financial investment in Mr. Jordan's work to pay hardcover prices three times over in order to finish the last book in his series.

Labels: Economy of Doom, Fantasy, Upcoming Books