A Provo resident will write the final installment in a 12-volume series considered by many to be the most important work in the heroic fantasy genre since J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."

New York City-based Tor Books announced Friday that 31-year-old Brandon Sanderson had been chosen by Harriet McDougall, widow of the late Robert Jordan, aka James O. Rigney Jr., to write the long-promised novel "A Memory of Light," the concluding volume of Jordan's "The Wheel of Time." Jordan died Sept. 16 after a prolonged struggle with amyloidosis, a rare blood disease.

Sanderson, speaking from South Carolina, where he is meeting with McDougall at her home, said that the job of finishing Jordan's epic is both "incredibly daunting, and incredibly exciting at the same." "A Memory of Light" is expected to be published in late 2009.

"To me, Robert Jordan is still kind of a mythological figure," Sanderson said. "I would have done this with no credit and no payment, to be perfectly honest."

"The Eye of the World," the first book in the "Wheel of Time" sequence, debuted in print on Jan. 15, 1990, when Sanderson was just 14 years old. The 11 books in the series have sold more than 14 million copies in the United States, and more than 30 million worldwide, with each of the most recent four volumes -- "Knife of Dreams," "Crossroads of Twilight," "Winter's Heart" and "The Path of Daggers" -- rising to No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover fiction best seller list.

Sanderson, a graduate of Brigham Young University, has four books in print, three of them through Tor. His first novel, the single-volume fantasy "Elantris," was published in 2005. Sanderson said that McDougall contacted him directly to ask whether he would be interested in writing "A Memory of Light" based on extensive notes and outlines completed by Jordan prior to his death.

After their initial phone call, a month passed before the married father of one learned that he'd been picked.

In a statement released by Tor, McDougall said, "I have chosen Brandon Sanderson to complete Robert Jordan's great work, and I am absolutely delighted that he accepted. I will of course be editing this book as I have all of the other books of 'The Wheel of Time.' "

In addition to working with McDougall, Sanderson said, he will be teamed up with Jordan's two full-time assistants on the project. Sanderson plans to devote his time through January to rereading the series and hopes to complete a first draft by midsummer.

His deadline to turn in the completed manuscript is December 2008.

• Cody Clark can be reached at 344-2542 or cclark@heraldextra.com.