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ladyhindsight · 8 months ago

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We are doing this again. Unlike with City of Bones, the revisions in City of Ashes deal more with narrative mistakes being corrected and some utterly incomprehensible changes rather than the world-building being so blatantly unprepared that it needed to undergo full-on metamorphosis.

Here I've compared three different e-book versions of City of Ashes, one of which I presume is the original 2008 text, one that is the 2015 edition, and one I quite frankly have no idea which it is but most likely somewhere in-between the other two. This, I figured out so smartly, is because some things have remained unchanged as in the 2008 edition, but it also includes later changes that have been made in the 2015 edition which are not present in the original text.

I was looking for a nicely formatted file and then noticed by chance that these three are all different. While I understand and know that it is perfectly normal for a book to undergo changes and corrections throughout different editions, I am no less confused by some most of these.

And here we have one of the many boomerangs because what. Why. The second one was the best because now you've just repeated the word 'floor' unnecessarily, so it sounds just dumb:

→ he strode across the floor, his boots echoing against the floor

The prose has truly peaked.

Here's a good example of how some changes made after the original release are also in the 2015 edition but not in the original text, which places the 2010? release in-between the two. In some cases the 2008/2010? are the same but 2015 one different.

→ Daniel was first Maia's twin brother but was then changed to an older one. It's a minor change but also inane. Because what does it matter, why couldn't Daniel be Maia's twin?

→ Maia's character being introduced with her full name is better.

→ Where did the mahogany go?

It's gone as it should. In City of Bones it is said that "in the center of the room sat a magnificent desk. It was carved from a single slab of wood, a great, heavy piece of oak that gleamed with the dull shine of years."

It was oak. So you just couldn't replace 'mahogany' with 'oak' then? So you just deleted it altogether? Okay.

Another boomerang. Let's go with 'body'. No, let's change it to 'form'. No, let's go with 'body' again.

I am left with the impression that Clare didn't know what to do with this interaction/scene or what she wanted from it, neither did she think how it would fit the structure of the part I of the book, because how are all these so different. Sorry, it's early. No, sorry, it's late. No, I'll tell you what, sorry for waking you up at all, really.

TIME. The scene before this is Luke, Clary, and Simon having dinner at Luke's some time after the episode caused by Jace in Hunter's Moon (Chapter 2 "Hunter's Moon"). It's the same day the book began. This part of the chapter that begins with Jace being woken up and then meeting the Inquisitor in the Institute Library intercepts that scene. The Inquisitor accosts Jace and then decides to take in to the Silent City as a prisoner. Then we get back to Luke, Clary, and Simon. Clary is helping Luke "clean up the remains of dinner" when Maia comes over. Simon and Maia talk and once Simon returns to the kitchen, it is said that "The smell of cold night air came in with him." It's the same day as the book began. It is night. Simon and Clary talk about tomorrow and prepare for bed. Then in the next chapter begins with Jace's held in a cell in the Silent City. Then we cut to Simon and Clary making out as they haven't gone to sleep yet. The narrative structure doesn't give any reason to think these scenes aren't happening somewhat concurrently. Especially when Clary then receives a message from Isabelle which reveals Jace has been taken away. When Clary, Isabelle, and Alec go rescue Jace, and the Conclave meet them outside, it is still night. ("The sun couldn't have risen yet--could it?" / "despite the witchlight illuminating the night.")

→ Jace couldn't have woken up 5 a.m. because he would've slept through the night and it would've been the next day, meaning the scenes with Clary happened previous evening/night, which doesn't make sense to write them in such order. Also it would've been morning already once Jace was rescued from the Silent City. This was corrected tooo..

→ Midnight, which makes more sense narrative-wise and structurally, because why insert scenes with Jace that take place in the small hours of the next, if the scenes with Clary are still the previous day and the events cross when Clary gets the message from Isabelle? So instead here Jace has merely taken an evening nap.

→ Eventually removing any indication of time propably gave more flexibility to the interpretation as to how long all of this took to happen. Which was still the one and the same night but whatever.

ALEC'S EXCUSES. There are three and they all mean different things.

→ First Alec has stayed up all night, not even trying to go to sleep. He looks tired, which by the following conversation they have could be also interpreted as him being worried about the situtation surrounding Jace.

→ Alec tried to sleep, and the rest is the same. Not that different, so I don't get why change it at all. Maybe Alec not getting sleep despite trying underlines his worrying.

→ Alec straight up says he went out. The 2015 edition removes all of the previous indications because how dare anyone else have dark shadows under their eyes but Jace. How dare Alec look like he might have something to worry about. Nay! He was with Magnus.

Also, Clary trying to rewrite history by having Jace seek out Alec? Also, "friend"? How about brother or, better yet, parabatai?

→ "They came" and "they explained" were erraneous to begin with since Maryse tells Isabelle (Jace and Alec as well) in the first chapter that Robert was "unfortunately [...] still in Alicante."

→ I don't know whatever that mess in between is, but in the 2015 version Clare seems to have sorted it out.

Boomerang. At this point in the story, the only Downworlders drained of their blood was the warlock Elias, who appears in the prologue. The werewolf cub that was killed in the allie was never drained. ("It seems whoever murdered the werewolf was intercepted before the blood could be taken..." -Maryse to Luke in chapter 3 "The Inquisitor")

→ As a side comment: It was a wild goose chase in the sense that this mission did not need the whole Conclave attending to it and leave the Institute utterly unmanned especially if someone needed to contact them.

I don't understand why.

Added badassery.

Added a nice explanation and rules to the creation of vampires.

This was also an error to begin with, because just couple paragraphs before it is literally said that "Clary yanked the blade back" in each version. She already did it, which it is only reasonable the sentence was eventually removed.

Simon's love for Clary watered down, which I think is for the better. This is also relevant in a later part here...

Another thing I don't understand why.

This was also an error (depending on the interpretation). In this scene, before this part, Jace already closes his eyes once but opens them up. Without shutting his eyes again, him not seeing Valentine rather reads like he's so far away in his thoughts that he doesn't "see" him. But as this was corrected by adding the sentence about Jace shutting his eyes again, it probably was just an error.

→ 2008: Magnus was healing Maia, because Luke was outside being attacked by the demons that Jace and Clary went to investigate and then dispatched. Luke was brought in after the attack and Magnus healed him then. I can't help but wonder how Clare (or her editor for that matter) couldn't keep up with what was happening in the story.

Clary couldn't have been worse off because Magnus didn't have a chance to go help them while he was supposedly healing Luke inside the house while Luke was lying outside on a riverbank. So that was reasonably removed.

→ 2010?: Luke was corrected to Maia because that's who Magnus was actually healing. Only problem here is that only one of the lines were changed, and the "you would have died" is still inaccurate since Magnus couldn't have helped Luke before the demons were killed and he was brought inside to be healed.

→ 2015 is finally correct.

→ the person you love/someone I love were all corrected accordingly.

→ the blue part, however, was wrong in the same book, because if we return back to that part, Simon actually says you know what the worst feeling I can imagine is. Not the worst feeling you can have is.

This was also an error because Jace had given Clary his jacket and he only had the shirt on. It was also made a point since the demon shit had burned down his shirt sleeve pm his shoulder enough for Imogen to see his Herondale scar.

→ 2008 version never happened. The scene in City of Bones is the following:

Clary stepped back, but Jace stood very still as the glass rained around him, staring at the empty frame of the mirror. Clary had expected him to swear, to shout or curse at his father, but instead he only waited for the shards to stop falling. When they did, he knelt down silently and carefully in the welter of broken glass and picked up one of the larger pieces, turning it over in his hands.

and then, after no rocking back and forth in between (either in the original or revised version):

He said nothing, only whispered something under his breath. She couldn’t quite hear the words, but she reached out and took the bit of glass out of his hand. He was bleeding where he’d held it, from two fine and narrow gashes. She put the shard down and took his hand, closing his fingers over the injured palm. “Honestly, Jace,” she said, as gently as she’d touched him, “don’t you know better than to play with broken glass?” He made a sound like a choked laugh before he reached out and pulled her into his arms. She was aware of Luke watching them from the window, but she shut her eyes resolutely and buried her face against Jace’s shoulder.

It's like Clare imagined a whole other scene in City of Bones, recalled it while writing City of Ashes and kind of forgot that it wasn't how the scene even went.

Anyhoo. These are the ones I managed to catch. Ta ta.

#City of Ashes #Clary Fray #Jace Herondale #Alec Lightwood #Isabelle Lightwood #Luke Garroway #Magnus Bane #Maryse Lightwood #Edition mods

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