“Impossible? Improbable.”

For me personally, the crows being younger is definitely an aspect of their characters and creates a specific vibe of like the young scrappy underdog thing. But, I don’t think them not being teenagers specifically in this new edition breaks the story or their characters or the vibe. Like for me them being teenagers specifically vs vague early 20s isn’t a huge jump and is basically the same thing. It’s not the teen thing it’s the young thing that matters to me personally like that divide between Peka and the merchants and stuff being older and the crows being younger is what is important to setting the scene in terms or age when I read not them being teenagers specifically. (And even if they were edited to be older than vaguely their early 20s now while I don’t think I’d prefer it, for me personally it doesn’t necessarily ruin the story or their characters it just makes it feel a little different).

I feel like what I’m gonna say next is sort of a hot take, but I think whether or not their age is important is totally subjective to the reader and whatever your feeling is is valid (hence why I kept saying “for me personally” above). Like whether it impacts your feeling when reading depends on you as an individual. For some people the young aspect (ambiguous or not) matters and for some it doesn’t. People can make (and have made) arguments that their specific ages or their youth matter to the plot and their character arcs definitively, but the fact of the matter is that there are a decent amount of people out there that don’t feel that way and in this case I kind of err on the side of perception is reality. Like, for me personally their youth impacts how I feel when I read but I have a friend who said it doesn’t because when she reads she pretends they’re older anyways and she just doesn’t feel differently about the characters or the story even if the timeline of their lives is shifted so that things happen later or they have to live with their trauma a longer before the events of the book and she said she’d feel the same even if they were edited to be even older than vaguely early 20s or young adults. Idk I just think everyone is entitled to their opinions and the discourse is a lot right now especially when there’s so much speculation and rumor going around.

Now what I do agree with in terms of outrage about this is that it is absolutely wrong of them to not advertise this and to make no statement or indication that these edits happened. It feels like they’re trying to hide it and it’s shady (and I feel like that’s part of why the reactions are so strong, the secrecy makes it feels more like a betrayal).

(Disclaimer for all of this but specifically for my last two points: I haven’t gone through the entire series and seen every edit made I’ve just gone into my copies and done a quick scan to compare parts of the new edition to the original to find a few examples and that’s what I’m basing this all off of)

Putting aside arguments of if their ages are important or not and if they should have been edited or not, the fact is they were and I have some thoughts about the edits they did make assuming again the goal was to make them more vaguely young adult like in their early to mid 20s (again we don’t actually know the motivations or goal because no statement has been made I just feel like that’s what their intent was). Anyways, to me, objectively, I feel like they edited more than they needed to for their goal and if I was the one tasked with going in and making their ages vaguer I would have done it differently. Like sure take out mentions of specific ages, “sixteen” “seventeen” “eighteen” etc that makes sense, but taking out the line “Brekker’s eyes were ancient, but he couldn’t be any older than Matthias.” Was unnecessary and could have been left in imo. If they wanted to make the ages vaguer I would have, and feel like they should have, done so in a way that changed as little as possible and edited the text very sparingly.

This leads me into my final point and thought on this, from a history standpoint I don’t personally love the practice of editing books after they’ve been published (especially anything more than grammar and especially with no indication or concrete statement to explain to people what was changed and why). Changing their ages to be more vague and not specifically teenagers I’m sure was mostly a marketing decision so they could better be shelved in the adult section (these editions actually only initially caught my eye because they were in the adult section at my bookstore) and it’s not technically censorship and probably not anything more sinister than corporate greed, but it feels vaguely censorship adjacent to me, especially with the fact that they made the changes so quietly, and that feels a little icky and just doesn’t sit quite right with me just on principle. And so again while I don’t personally take issue with the idea of their ages being vague instead of specifically teen (though as I just said I do take issue with how they went about it), since I err on the side of changing as little as possible and don’t feel that it makes a difference to me, I do wish they hadn’t done it because I just feel it wasn’t necessary and they should have left their ages as is and changed as little as possible. especially since the books have been out for 10 years and reached plenty of adults even with them being teens. Like the juice was not worth the squeeze imo.

I totally see why this upset so many people and why people are having strong reactions and I think all the criticism and everything is valid, I myself had a negative gut reaction to finding out about the edits, but these are just my thoughts and opinions on all of this after sitting and thinking through my own feelings and observing the response the last couple days!

I really don’t like debating or arguing with people and again I truly feel like everyone is entitled to their feelings and opinion on this I’m not saying any take is definitively right or wrong so replies, comments, and asks trying to provoke an argument will probably be ignored! (Though if you have genuine questions about anything in this post or about any other thoughts I may have on the situation I’m always happy to discuss things and explain why I think the way I do!)