Richard Morgan completes THE DARK DEFILES

Richard Morgan has confirmed that he has finished The Dark Defiles, the concluding volume of the Land Fit For Heroes trilogy which began with The Steel Remains in 2008 and continued with The Cold Commands in 2011.

As Morgan says, this is by far the longest book he's ever written. At 247,000 words, it's a little bit shorter than Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind (259,000 words) and almost half again the length of The Cold Commands. At one stage the book was getting so big there were talks about splitting it, but that fear seems to have passed.

The book is listed as being released in the UK on 21 August and in the USA on 7 October, though neither date is finalised yet.

Great news. Morgan has reported that his next project will probably be SF, possibly set in one of his already-existing universes, so it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with. In the meantime, we have one very large fantasy (with SF overtones) novel to tide us over with.