Art director Isaac here with an art reveal today. Recently Brandon, Kara, and Adam have been discussing publicity for Rhythm of War, and one thing that Tor has asked for is a simplified symbol to represent the Stormlight Archive on certain marketing materials.

Now, to be clear, we love the original Stormlight Archive symbol, and we are in no way abandoning or replacing it. Many readers have bought shirts and decals or have even gotten tattoos of it. We are using it in The Way of Kings leatherbound and will continue to use it as a chapter icon in Rhythm of War and future Stormlight books. So rest assured that we are not retiring this tried and true iconic symbol.

However, the symbol is complex, and it doesn’t read well at small sizes, so at Tor’s request, we’ve sought a simplified design. During this search, it occurred to Brandon and me that eventually we’ll need simplified symbols for all of the Cosmere worlds—symbols that will need to be easily recognizable from far distances—basically, space-era versions of our current symbols.

So, after hundreds of drawings and thumbnails, we’re unveiling to you now the space-era symbol for the Stormlight Archive.

We’ve built this on the skeleton of the original symbol, preserving the relationship between the sword, circle, and main focal point. Instead of extra swords, we have rays of light. Instead of the complex double-eye of the Almighty, we’ve chosen the burst of light from the original Cosmere symbol.

Going forward, we will actively use both this symbol and the original in promoting the Stormlight Archive, and eventually you can expect space-age versions of many of the current Cosmere planetary symbols.

Adam here. Many of you reading this probably already saw my post from a few weeks ago giving you your first peak at the new Dragonsteel special leather bound edition of Warbreaker. Well today, I am please to (finally) announce that we have recieved confirmation from the bindery that the orders will be shipped out very soon. So, if you ordered from one of our fine independent partners I mentioned in my previous post, they should be getting those in hand very soon. If you preordered them from Brandon’s website store, we should have those in hand soon as well and will be shipping them out as soon as we can in the order the they were received. Each book is pre-signed, pre-shrinkwrapped, and pre-packed in individual boxes which means you’ll be getting pristine books. (Please note that the way the leather stretches over the books’ hubs and spine typical of how leather reacts to the board underneath.)

Since my last post went up—and sorry about the bad news here—we’ve sold through almost all of our first printing. As of today (Dec. 13), we have approximately 200 numbered copies available, and 500 unnumbered copies remaining. That will be the end of our current supply. We will be ordering a second printing soon, but we don’t know when we will be getting new copies in.

In this volume, we’ve changed slightly the way we include art. The gallery at the beginning is much shorter—4 pages—and highlights the US cover and three international covers. The rest of the art is scattered throughought the rest of the book, including Ben McSweeney’s spot art of Nightblood, Jian Guo’s beautiful dropcaps, and six full-color illustrations that were commissioned for this edition.

All full-color art is printed on pearlescent paper that makes the colors sparkle a little bit. (Please note, due to the hoops the binder had to jump through to make this work, we cannot guarantee the use of pearlescent paper for printings beyond the first. We can guarantee, however, that the book will still be beautiful.)

As we’ve said before, this is the highest-quality (and in my opinion, the most beautiful) book we’ve produced. And it wouldn’t be possible without the gorgeous art from Howard Lyon, Bryan Mark Taylor, Miranda Meeks, Jian Guo, Ben McSweeney, as well as the never-before-seen pieces below from Dan dos Santos, Micah Epstein, and Magali Villeneuve.

If you were able to come to the Starsight release part a few weeks ago, you may have seen a sneak peak at the new socks we’re putting on Brandon’s store. We’ve teamed up with Woven Pear to create and offer these exclusive socks. We’ve started with a few initial designs for Doomslug and worldhoppers. Check out the store listing for more details.

Edgedancer, a novella that was originally published last year as part of Arcanum Unbounded, was just released in eBook and (gorgeous) small hardcover yesterday.

For those of you who don’t know, the events that take place in Edgedancer occur between the closing of Words of Radiance and the forthcoming Oathbringer and is often referred to as Stormlight 2.5. The new release of Edgdancer also includes Lift’s interlude from Words of Radiance as a prologue so you can read all of her story in one place.

Here is a brief introduction to Edgedancer for those of you who haven’t read it yet.

Three years ago, Lift asked a goddess to stop her from growing older—a wish she believed was granted. Now, in Edgedancer, the barely teenage nascent Knight Radiant finds that time stands still for no one. Although the young Azish emperor granted her safe haven from an executioner she knows only as Darkness, court life is suffocating the free-spirited Lift, who can’t help heading to Yeddaw when she hears the relentless Darkness is there hunting people like her with budding powers. The downtrodden in Yeddaw have no champion, and Lift knows she must seize this awesome responsibility.

If you want to read the first few chapters of Edgedancer, Tor.com released the first 3 chapters as a preview last year.

Enjoy!