He's Dead

I had planned on blogging about The Count of Monte Cristo tonight, since I'm reading that for my Humanities class, but when I got on the computer and looked at the news for the first time in a few days, everything pertaining to that was pushed to the back of my mind.

Robert Jordan is dead. Aged 58.

Robert Jordan is the pen name of James Oliver Rigney. He wrote quite a few books during his life, but the best-known ones were The Wheel of Time books. The first of them, The Eye of the World, was first published in 1990. The twelfth and final book, A Memory of Light, was due to come out in January 2009. He would've been writing the series for nineteen years, during which he gained millions of fans, including myself. The Wheel of Time surpassed even The Lord of the Rings and it's associated books on my list of favorites, which was truly unexpected, but it deserved it. The Wheel of Time is an amazing series. The more I have read it, the more I have marvelled at the complexity and depth of them. RJ had to have had a very, very detailed outline when he first started writing them seventeen years ago, and he's incorporated so many little details in that it's breathtaking. And now he's dead.

He succumbed to a rare blood disease known as Amyloidosis, which is, so far as I know, terminal. He's struggled on against it for over almost a year and a half, but died on Sunday at 2:45 PM. His death came as a surprise to us all, and I still can't quite believe it. It's so...unexpected. I knew that his disease was likely to at least shorten his lifespan, but he's lasted long enough and well enough against it that I had started to believe that he would live at least long enough to publish A Memory of Light, which would conclude the beloved nineteen-year saga. His blog posts were so confident, it seemed even morbid to think that he might not beat Amyloidosis. Unfortunately, he didn't.

While many authors would not be highly mourned by me upon their deaths, RJ has the position of "No. 1 Best Author" in my mind, and his death is crushing. He had comprehensive notes for A Memory of Light just in case he died before it was completed, so that another author could complete it, but I don't think any of us actually thought that that worst situation would come to pass.

One comfort in this time of grief is that RJ was a Christian. I'm very glad that my favourite author is in Heaven as opposed to Hell right now--I honestly hope to see him there (in Heaven!) one day.

The Light shine on you, RJ, and may you shelter in the palm of the Creator's hand. The last embrace of the Mother welcome you home.