Will ‘The Doors of Stone’ Release in 2025?

The Kingkiller Chronicle is one of my favourite fantasy series of all time. And yet, there’s still no evidence that The Doors of Stone, the final book in the main trilogy, is close to releasing. Will it ever see publication?

Whenever I recommend fantasy novels, The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss is always top of my list. I’ve been passionate about the series for a long time; I even ran a Kingkiller fan account on Twitter for several years. Rothfuss has a way with words that just resonates. He’s a true wordsmith, spinning together sentences that read like poetry, in a world that’s so gloriously built.

The Kingkiller series starts with The Name of the Wind (2007), which follows Kvothe, a recluse innkeeper with a troubled, mystifying and tragic past. Over the course of the novel, he recounts his life and the myriad events that shaped him. And that just scratches the surface.

The Kingkiller series was continued a few years later with The Wise Man’s Fear (2011), which further continued Rothfuss’ masterful story. He went on to write a number of companion novels, including The Slow Regard of Silent Things (2014). His most recent addition to the Kingkiller universe was The Narrow Road Between Desires, which released in 2023.

The third and final novel in the Kingkiller trilogy, wrapping up Kvothe’s story, is The Doors of Stone. Fans have now been waiting well over a decade to see how the story wraps up, with many losing faith in ever seeing the crucial, conclusive novel. The situation is very similar to George R.R. Martin’s lengthy delay writing The Winds of Winter.

What’s the reason for the delay?

Over the years, Rothfuss has spoken a lot about the status of The Doors of Stone. He’s mainly been vocal about it during his Twitch livestreams, where he raises funds for the charity Worldbuilders, which helps support humanitarian efforts worldwide. The delay is not down to any one reason. But one thing that constantly pops up is Rothfuss’ perfectionist tendencies. He won’t release something until it’s absolutely perfect — which, I suppose, is a consequence of the impeccable quality of his writing.

“I worked on The Wise Man’s Fear for a long time and there were a ton of problems with it,” he said back in 2020, “and it didn’t match up with the first book anymore in a lot of places because I had changed so much and improved it and characters had been added and character stories had been developed and expanded on. So then I had to do all of that, plus I was a better writer then I really fleshed things out and did a bunch of stuff.”

I imagine he’s running into similar problems with book 3. There’s so many moving parts in Kingkiller, it’s a tough proposition to have everything flow and fit together seamlessly. And with characters like the Cthaeh, avoiding plot holes is like dodging landmines. That said, however, he has previously reiterated that he knows exactly how the series ends. Before writing the novels, while he was drafting out the story, the ending was clear in his mind.

Funnily enough, Rothfuss has myriad ideas to continue to build on the Kingkiller world after he publishes The Doors of Stone. “I think it would be fun to do something about the creation war, which was so long ago, kind of back before the world broke, that time is kind of hard to measure meaningfully.”

Patrick Rothfuss has already released the prologue to The Doors of Stone!

In 2021, Rothfuss read aloud on a livestream the prologue to The Doors of Stone. It wasn’t much, considering the prologue is very similar to the first two novels, but it was a step in the right direction. Unsurprisingly, the prologue itself was absolutely flawless. Check it out:

As part of the fundraiser, Rothfuss also wanted to read out an entire chapter of the upcoming novel as part of the stretch goal. Despite reaching the goal, he never got around to reading the chapter, which would have been a standalone story rather than a crucial, spoiler-filled part of Kvothe’s saga.

“I feel really bad about the chapter,” he told his Twitch chat back in 2023. “It got complicated and it got hard and various fires in my life which meant I couldn’t keep it going, couldn’t put a bow on it, and I feel bad about it.”

Will we see The Doors of Stone in 2025?

The short answer to this question is we don’t know. I’m fully aware that answer doesn’t help at all — it’s the same answer you’d get if you asked me every year of the last decade. One thing that is worth mentioning is that you shouldn’t believe all of the fake release dates you see floating around online. Fake release dates are rife.

Every year without fail I see people fall for Amazon placeholder dates, and every year they’re wrong. Yes, The Doors of Stone has an Amazon listing, but don’t pay any attention do dates you see attached.