Pre-release City of Dragons (spoilers Farseer, LST, TM and RWC)

[Mervi]

Might we be getting two Robin Hobb books in one year? It's almost too good to be true.

I wouldn't hold my breath. Even if Robin is nearly done with the manuscript of the next Rain Wilds book, it will still have months of editing and proofing and typesetting and fixing things ahead. Also it seems lately that for some reason the publishers decide on some seemingly random publishing dates too (I guess based on market research?) that can be quite a long time after the book is "ready". As an example: The Dragon Keeper came out in June 2009 in the UK and in January 2010 in the US. I can not believe it takes 6-7 months to fix some typos and change the font/layout and cover art AFTER the book has already been published elsewhere. Hobb's books have ~traditionally had UK publishing dates in June or July, with Dragon Haven that schedule seems to have been shifted to March (the Inheritance also has a March publishing date in the UK). Could be they want to save RWC3 to next year, especially if they anticipate the next one after that takes a long time to write. (And no, we don't know anything about The Next One After That, it's just my personal speculation based on wishful thinking. )