American copies turned up in the mail a couple of days ago, and my thanks to Lou Anders and all the folks at Pyr for making a very handsome book. Minor changes to the cover – slightly different font, and some capital letters, which I like quite a bit actually – more authority. Same background, though, and the same fingertip-loving textured paper. If it ain’t broke, after all, why fix it? It’s also a slightly richer, orangey colour where the British is more buff/cream, but there you go.
It’s what they call a B-Format, so somewhere between those monster American trade paperbacks and a mass-market paperback. Similar to the British trade paperback in size, though intriguingly slightly squarer. The internals are different (text a bit less densely set, and it has book and chapter titles at the top of each page, which I kind of like) so there are quite a lot more pages (529 compared to 422). Paradoxically, however, due to the thinner, smoother, and basically (sorry Gollancz) better paper of the US edition, it’s a lot thinner, while still being a bit heavier. Go figure.
Content-wise, of course, it is equally excellent. Ha ha.
