Looking Inside the New Trade Paperback of Mistborn

We previously reported that there would be a new edition of Mistborn coming in May, and it came out last week. It's a trade paperback size, and this time it's marketed towards teens. The actual text is exactly the same (save for a few mistakes that were finally fixed), but has new maps. I snagged it today, so let's take a look.

First, the trade paperback size is wonderful. It's just more comfortable to hold. The text is bigger than the smaller, mass market paperback--which makes sense, considering it is marketed to teens. The cover, which has previously been the cover for the entire trilogy of ebooks, is as beautiful as it has always been, and the title and author text is lightly embossed. It's really nice to hold, and any day of the week, I'd rather hold this one than the paperback.

The text on the back features the prologue epigraph, and the plot summary on the back is almost identical to the mass market paperback, but doesn't mention Allomancy, instead focusing solely on Vin. It ends with the new line, "Where a hero rose to save the world and failed, can a young heroine succeed?" This, with the Vin-centric cover, is the marketing towards teens, and I hope it works.

Inside, there's a section for "Tor Teen Books by Brandon Sanderson," which in addition to Mistborn and The Rithmatist, have The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages listed as upcoming. It took me a moment to realize they are referring to the trade paperback rereleases of them, because obviously those books are already out. I'm kind of dumb sometimes.

The symbols on the chapter headers and part headers are exactly the same as the normal Mistborn version, so it doesn't use the base sixteen numbering system that was in Alloy of Law--if you never noticed, the symbols in this book just go up to 23, then repeat again, where Alloy uses the actual numbering system in-world. But what is new? Let's look at the maps.

As you can see, the map of the Final Empire is almost identical, but now it is full page, with no borders. The background of it is no longer white, but a nice texture that makes it feel more ashy. Very cool, but it's not "new" per se. As it turns out, the Luthadel map is the new one:

Why, it's in the exact same style as the map of Elendel in The Alloy of Law. Instead of there being a legend for the points of interest, they are marked as X's on the map itself. It also features that same ashy texture. The borderless map is really dang cool, too. So, if it looks like Alloy's map, does it have that mysterious text from Nazh?

Yep. If you can't see, it says "Since you insisted on having an updated version, here is the new one. I am not going back a third time. - Nazh".

I am in awe. That is freaking hilarious. (Also, someone should tell Nazh that Well of Ascension's Luthadel map has different points of interests in it.)

For those of you who don't know, Nazh's writings have appeared in Alloy of Law and Words of Radiance. Presumably, he's collecting all these maps for the writer of the Ars Arcanums for all the cosmere books, which are all the same person.

Solely for the hilarity and awesomeness of the Luthadel map, this is worth a purchase, but the size makes it awesome all by itself.

Dang it, Brandon. I already have too many copies of this book and now I'm going to buy this one, as well as the re-released Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages, which could also have Nazh quotes?

Lord Ruler, man.