Robert Jordan

Well, one of my favorite authors, Robert Jordan, passed away on Monday. He suffered from a rare blood disease, but seemed to keep his faith in God's providence to the end.

Jordan was the author of the Wheel of Time series. If you've ever read the series, you'll know that it is really, really long and the books are also really, really long. He was working on the 12th and final book in the series when he died. I have to admit, I'm pretty selfish. My first thought, when I heard he was dead, was about the 12th book. Part of the reason I thought of that is that I'm in the midst of re-reading the whole thing and am on the 3rd book right now. No one wants to read a series that doesn't have a good ending.

Thankfully, it appears that the major plot-lines will be resolved. From Wikipedia:

On October 18, 2005, at a book signing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Jordan gave the working title of the 12th book as A Memory of Light. As one of the attendees told Dragonmount.com, Jordan also warned that the final volume of the saga "could be a 1500-page monster" because he has so many dangling plot threads to wrap up in a single volume. He maintained that A Memory of Light would remain one volume "whether it is 1500 pages long, Tor has to invent a new binding system, or it comes with its own library cart". Due to his health problems, Jordan did not work at full force on the final installment, but blog entries confirmed that he continued work on it until his death, and he shared all of the significant plot details with his family not long before he died.

I guess I'll keep reading!