And that, again, fits in kind of with this question. Final one in this section. Could we ask… The pictures and the maps and the illustrations used are absolutely fantastic, and for me as a reader, really kind of added… Especially the way you kind of put pictures after you’d described them, in a way, because then you could compare what you thought to what you saw. How do you think that added to the book, and was that something you planned or was that something the publisher or…
This was all me. In fact, the publisher was kind of skeptical, because it’s not something you see in epic fantasy. And publishers, you know, they have this weird sort of mix inside of them—they want to do what’s been successful in the past. And yet, unless you innovate a little bit, you won’t continue to be successful. And that’s a hard balance. And to Tor’s credit, they decided that what I was pitching on this book with all these illustrations was in the right direction. That it would be evolving, and it would help with the sense of immersion, rather than fight against it. But they really worried it would feel like a graphic novel. There’s nothing wrong with graphic novels, but we don’t want the audience to get the wrong opinion of the story.
And one thing I was very careful to do is I don’t illustrate the characters. I want the characters to be how you imagine them, and I don’t want to give you a picture of them. So these illustrations I really wanted to be in-world illustrations done by someone…done by Shallan. And this was something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I felt was integral and important to the book. And that without it, the book wouldn’t work as well because Roshar is a pretty weird place. It’s got some pretty bizarre feelings to it, and I wanted to give some illustrations to help the reader get a real sense this is a real place. So that was me. I’m glad that people are enjoying them; we did dedicate quite a bit of work making them all come across—there are four illustrators that worked on the book. And so…yeah.
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