Elantris Errata

[halex]

Good afternoon! I'm currently rereading my leatherbound Elantris, and I had two questions:

1) Is there a collection of changes made between each edition, like this post for Words of Radiance? I'm mostly curious how much was changed at the end when Raoden draws the line in the dirt to correct the Aon for the city.

2) Is anyone collecting a list of typos or errata for Elantris? I just found this error on page 314 of the second leatherbound edition:

"Don't look so sour, Galladon," Raoden said with a laugh. "Aren't you Dulas supposed to be fond of garish clothing?" "That's the aristocracy-the citizens and republicans."

I believe there should be a paragraph break between Raoden's dialoge and Galladon's.

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, halex said:

Good afternoon! I'm currently rereading my leatherbound Elantris, and I had two questions:

1) Is there a collection of changes made between each edition, like this post for Words of Radiance? I'm mostly curious how much was changed at the end when Raoden draws the line in the dirt to correct the Aon for the city.

There is at least one old (archived) post with changes (not necessarily content), and we do have this Word of Brandon on the Subject.

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Elantris 10th Anniversary

First, in relation to Elantris, May is the 10th anniversary of its release, my first published book! In celebration, we've been putting together a 10th Anniversary Edition, which is coming out later this year. It will be in trade paperback form (the paperback format which is more the size of a hardcover), and I'm hoping I can get Tor to print at least a few hardcovers for those who want to get them.

We've packed this edition with some cool extras. It includes a new foreword by Dan Wells, a retrospective by myself, an Ars Arcanum appendix (as this was the only one of my Cosmere books not to have one), brand-new redone maps by Isaac Stewart, and a very short extra scene. In addition, as I mentioned, we've changed a few things.

Now, this is the dangerous thing I talked about above. We've seen in certain high-profile films that changes done by the creator many years later are controversial. It's a slippery path. Part of creating a work of art is learning when to let it alone—most writers I know could just keep tweaking something forever. The quote (often attributed to da Vinci) that says “Art is never finished, just abandoned” is quite a true statement.

However, Elantris needed some attention. When I wrote it, I didn't have access to a good cartographer who could make the continuity of my crazy map-based ideas for the story work out. I did my best, but it never quite clicked. The maps didn't match the story, and the conceptualization of the ending was always kind of vague because of this disconnect.

Well, I have Isaac now, along with Peter who is really, really good with the minutiae of this sort of plotting. We've made two kinds of sweeping changes, then, to the text:

Map Continuity: We've had to shift the locations of some buildings and events as we've figured out a scale for the maps and for the city. We've tweaked the ending; the events are the same, but where certain things happen has been changed to fit. (Over the years, many of you have asked me about this, and I've had to admit that we just got it wrong.) This shouldn't change the story in any significant way except that now it actually makes sense, but I thought you should know.

Language Changes: Peter has done a very, very thorough copyedit, and has made some stylistic changes to remove some of the quirks of my earlier prose. (Extraneous commas, for example.) Again, this shouldn't change the story in any significant way except to make it more readable.

Please see PM

Quote

2) Is anyone collecting a list of typos or errata for Elantris? I just found this error on page 314 of the second leatherbound edition:

"Don't look so sour, Galladon," Raoden said with a laugh. "Aren't you Dulas supposed to be fond of garish clothing?" "That's the aristocracy-the citizens and republicans."

I believe there should be a paragraph break between Raoden's dialoge and Galladon's.

I don't think there were dedicated Typo threads on these forums for Elantris, but might have been on the TWG forums that predate these.

Good Catch

Edited February 8, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG