So, there is a spoiler-free review of A Memory of Light upon Tor.com and I note it for a couple of reasons.
One is because, man, I’m a fan. If I had to
guess when I picked up The Eye of the World for the first time, I’ve been
reading these books for more than twenty years. It’s been a very
long journey, but a worthwhile one. It’s one that I’m not
sure I’ve really processed that it will actually come to an end. This
is meaningful to me. Though the wheel keeps turning, seeing how it all
ends is both exciting and sad. Leigh Butler notes “that this is the last
Wheel of Time book you’ll ever get to read for the first time” and
I think that while I’m going to buy the book on January 8 and I’m
not going to hesitate to read it, I’m probably going to pause a moment
before I actually open the cover. Because once I start reading it and
inevitably finish, it will really be over. And you can’t take that
back.
Two: Up until today, I haven’t updated this blog since
September and if you consider my blogging output over the last two years, I
really haven’t done much with this for a while. A lot has happened
in the last three years and a lot is going to happen in the next three. I’ve
been reluctant to let go and say goodbye because I want to think that I’m
going to get a flash of inspiration and motivation and start writing again on a
regular basis – and that if I officially close the door…basically, for
lack of a better example, I don’t want to be Brett Favre*.
On the other hand, do I really want to just fade away like I’ve
been doing and just have a random post suggest that there will be more when
there isn’t more?
So while I can’t say for sure that this is going to
happen, it wouldn’t be bad to go out covering A Memory of Light –
saying goodbye to both The Wheel of Time and to this part of my life. We’ll
see. I’m wistful, thinking about the ending of the series and possibly
of this blog. I’ve made it almost ten years here and have been
blogging for perhaps fifteen. That’s like 257 years in internet
time.
*And yet, maybe I can be Shawn Michaels. I haven’t
lost my smile or nearly broken my back, but maybe after some extended time away
I’d come back as good as I ever was. You’d hear that familiar
beat followed by “oh, oh, Shawn…”