Leigh Bardugo’s SIEGE AND STORM Blog Tour Stop #4

Leigh Bardugo makes a stop at The YA Sisterhood in blog tour to talk about the differences between the Siege and Storm ARC (Advance Reader Copy) and the final version that will be released on June 4, 2013.  One in particular note (and slight spoiler!) is the fact that at some point during the story, we end up in The Darkling’s bed chamber.  Why are we in The Darkling’s bed chamber, you may ask?  All I can say is pre-order the book  so that you can find out as soon as it’s released.  (And also, if you pre-order the book, you’d be helping us reach the 2nd goal, in which we’ll get a new scene from Shadow and Bone told from another character’s point of view!  Who doesn’t want that?)

Let’s read what these differences are:

1. Obviously, the major change is the cover. I actually love the fact that both of my ARCs have covers radically different from what we ended up with on the final. With Shadow and Bone, the ARC cover was in the running for the final and I still have a soft spot for it, though I prefer the cover we ended up with. (To see some of the other cover directions that were discussed and discarded, click here) The cover of the Siege and Storm ARC was just a placeholder, but the feel of it is still in keeping with the series.

2. The Siege and Storm ARC features the map from book 1, but the hard cover will have an expanded map created by Keith Thompson showing more of Fjerda, Shu Han, and the lands across the True Sea.

3. There are two different chapter headings in the ARC. The chapter headings with the antlers were first created for Shadow and Bone, but they felt a bit too Celtic and medieval for the world of the book. Somehow a few of them found their way into the ARC of Siege and Storm. (My best theory is art department pixies.) They were created by April Ward and I have to say, I’m actually really glad they got to see the light of day.

4. My favorite difference between the ARC and the final version of the book is the change we made in the description of the Darkling’s bed chamber.

This is how it appears in the ARC:

The chamber was hexagonal, its dark wood walls carved with swirling vines and magical beasts. Above the huge canopied bed, the domed ceiling was wrought in smooth black obsidian and spangled with chips of mother-of-pearl laid out in constellations.

In the final:

The chamber was hexagonal, its dark wood walls carved into the illusion of a forest crowded with slender trees. Above the huge canopied bed, the domed ceiling was wrought in smooth black obsidian and spangled with chips of mother-of-pearl laid out in constellations.

It’s a small difference, but a significant one. Each major section of the Little Palace has a distinctive dome, but beyond that, the original description could refer to just about any other room in the building—and my editor called me out on it. Without realizing it, I’d used a kind of narrative shorthand to describe the chamber. It was a lost opportunity, a moment to offer a bit more insight into a character and to give the reader a deeper experience of the world. I spent quite a bit of time deciding what the Darkling would choose for the walls of his chamber, the first thing he’d see when he woke in the morning and the last he’d look at when he went to bed at night.

In some ways, it’s hard not to cringe over the ARC’s imperfections. We tweak bits of language, find a better word, discover things that could be cleaner and clearer. Still I’m glad the ARC exists. It’s a window onto where the story was—the same in its essentials, but unique in its details.

(via fourth blog tour stop: The YA Sisterhood.  Go there to enter to win a paperback copy of Shadow and Bone and a Hardcover copy of the upcoming Siege and Storm!)