James Oliver Rigney, best known by his pen name Robert Jordan, passed away last Sunday, a victim of the rare blood disease amyloidosis. He was 58.

His masterwork series, The Wheel of Time, redefined epic high fantasy. The first book of the series, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990 and began an extraordinary tale of good against evil that remains unfinished eleven books later. The world and characters that Jordan brought to life through his writing achieve a level of richness and complexity that is arguably unparalleled in the fantasy genre.

The Wheel of Time’s success helped to phase out the trilogy as the standard unit of fantasy, opening the door to multivolume sagas such as Sword of Truth, A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter. Critics often compare Jordan’s series to the Lord of the Rings trilogy for its scope and importance to the genre.

It is a tragedy that Jordan was unable to complete his work before he passed. The twelfth and final volume in the series is titled A Memory of Light and was slated for release in 2009. Though he was diagnosed in 2006 with the disease that would ultimately kill him, he maintained an optimistic attitude, saying, “Everybody knows or has heard of someone who was told they had five years to live, only that was twenty years ago and here [the] guy is, still around and kicking. I mean to beat him. I sat down and figured out how long it would take me to write all of the books I currently have in mind, without adding anything new and without trying rush anything. The figure I came up with was thirty years. Now, I'm fifty-seven, so anyone my age hoping for another thirty years is asking for a fair bit, but I don't care. That is my minimum goal. I am going to finish those books, all of them, and that is that.”

The world has lost a master storyteller whose work has changed the lives of countless readers, including mine. From all of your fans – goodbye, Mr. Rigney, and thank you.