hot take very worth re-reading, they should just pull the older version off the shelves — book recall, anyone? wonder if it would have made as much sense if I hadn’t already known what Sanderson was trying to do via the author note
So yes, this is markedly, substantially different from the individual books. The art still has the abrupt switcheroo halfway through the second (third?) volume, and the fundamental plot is the same, but there’s a real attempt to clarify the narrative thrust via the inclusion of new panels, changed dialogue, and more internal monologue. It’s not been that long since I’d read the first three separate books, but I can’t say that I’d have remembered it super well except that I definitely could tell that changes had been made.
The part that confuses me is if I’d have realized the main point if I hadn’t gotten a bit wrapped up in reading some BTS content after reading the original trilogy. I would think so–Sanderson goes out of his way to have our main character emphasize the point–but it definitely felt like I was going into the book looking for examples. So, actually, change my confusion–my confusion is more if it’ll now seem too pandering, because we’re beaten over the head over and over with our main point.
And that point is–not really a spoiler, because again Kenton does muse on this from very early on–that it is better to be a adept with a single tool (or, in this case, a single sand ribbon) than a jack-of-all-trades with multiple (in this case, able to control multiple ribbons but each with less finesse). It’s a common thread throughout the Cosmere, which values expertise over grand sweeping power, and it’s nice to see that expounded here as well.