Tor Books released an official press release today concerning KNIFE OF DREAMS, the 11th book in the Wheel of Time series.

Additionally, they sent us the cover art for the book. Without any further rambling, here it is:

If you want to really see the details of the characters, here is a higher resolution “crop” of the artwork. Click the image below to see it even larger.

Here is the press release that came from Tor:

Robert Jordan’s KNIFE OF DREAMS, Book Eleven of The Wheel of Time(tm), to go on-sale October 11, 2005!

Internationally bestselling author Robert Jordan’s eleventh book in his wildly popular The Wheel of Time series, Knife of Dreams (A Tor hardcover; 704 pages; $29.95; 0-312-87307-7), will go on-sale nation-wide this October 11, 2005. Knife of Dreams will be the second to last book in the highly acclaimed The Wheel of Time(tm) series, the last three books of which have all been #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Jordan, who is a graduate of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, with a degree in physics, has been lauded by The New York Times for his extraordinary story-telling ability: “the books’ battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and the ambiguities in these novels-the evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable events-bear the marks of American national experience during the last three decades, just as the experience of the First World War and its aftermath gave its imprint to Tolkien’s work.”

In Knife of Dreams, the dead are walking, men are dying impossible deaths, and it seems as though reality itself has become unstable: all are signs of the imminence of the Last Battle, when Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, must confront the Dark One as humanity’s only hope. But Rand dares not fight until he possesses all the surviving seals on the Dark One’s prison. And he faces other dangers-there are those among the Forsaken who will go to any length to see him dead . . . The winds of time have become a storm, and things that everyone believed were fixed in place forever are changing before their eyes. Now Rand must ride those storm winds, or the Dark One will triumph.

With over 12 million copies of The Wheel of Time series sold in North America, Tor will be publishing Knife of Dreams with an announced first printing of a million copies. As part of its marketing campaign, Tor will be promoting the Knife of Dreams with an Internet Hunt where participants will have the opportunity to navigate through twelve sites by solving a series of riddles.

Multiple prizes are planned for winning participants. In June, Tor will announce the internet hunt on participating Jordan websites and other mainstream and genre sites. Participants will be directed to a Knife of Dreams site (url to come) to register themselves for the hunt.

This press release confirms the October 11th release date, and seems to confirm that there will be 704 pages. Our understanding is that Robert Jordan is still working on the final edit, so don’t be surprised if that page count changes slightly.

The “internet hunt” that they refer to is an upcoming web-based game that several of the big Wheel of Time sites will be participating in. Yes, Dragonmount is among those sites which will be contributing to the event.

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More info
[ Knife of Dreams info page ]
[ Knife of Dreams discussion forum ]
[ Wheel of Time discussion forum ]