Recently, the widely popular, Netflix-adapted, young adult fantasy series Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo, celebrated its ten-year anniversary and, subsequently, had new limited editions released—with many fans and readers pre-ordering their copies following the announcement. However, the publication of these editions has sparked controversy across social media, with many readers noticing discrepancies between their pre-existing copies and these new editions. In these new books, all mentions of the characters’ ages had been removed, with entire paragraphs altered—what readers have assumed to be an attempt to age up the characters. This has sparked outrage, leaving fans disappointed with these amendments, believing the characters’ youth and adolescence to be integral parts of the story.
Arguably, these aged-up versions of the characters—by just a few years to their early twenties from their late teens—do not greatly affect the story, even making greater sense with the series’ darker themes and content. Leigh Bardugo herself had originally intended for these books to be published in the adult category but, as it was a spin-off to a previously young adult series, she was forced, like many female authors, to remain in the young adult genre. Thus, the changes themselves do not seem that offensive to the story and even understandable on Bardugo’s behalf.
The slightly more concerning element to this ‘booktok’ scandal is how none of these changes to the original work were disclosed by the publishing house or the author herself before the books’ release, with no comment yet to be made. For an American author and publishing house to alter the content of a written work without public knowledge—in a climate of book banning across the USA—seems careless, perhaps even dangerous.
Now, admittedly, minor changes to a teen book series can hardly be considered catastrophic, despite what ‘booktok influencers’ may believe. Yet, with the books allowed in American schools increasingly policed, could this be interpreted as a warning to a potential form of censorship? More universally, and applicable also to the UK, this presents the question of whether written works should be altered post publication, if so, by whom, and at what point do these alterations need to be publicly known. Indeed, it is not uncommon for books to be pulled post-publication for insensitive or offensive content, but it becomes a greater concern when the story itself is changed.
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