When did Darrell Sweet start doing covert art consultation for the Croatian and Serbian fantasy markets?
Anyone remember this scene in The Thousandfold Thought? I guess Kellhus likes to blast enemies as a post-coital exercise...
Edit: Didn't read the email carefully enough. These books were published in Croatia, not Serbia, although the two are as similar as American and British English.
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Haven't read the book, but that cover art sure as hell isn't gonna make me want to.
It's akin to putting a picture of a vomiting man on a bottle gin: stay away.
Nice way of putting it. It really doesn't fit the story at all, or rather it distorts it so much that it's hard to tell what type of story is behind those atrocious covers :P
almost cartoonish in a way. Is the Croatian market catered towards that perhaps?
Here's an interesting thought, Larry, I know some people read fantasy and their accompanying mental images are cartoon-like, or graphic novel-like, ie animated. Maybe that is how they can conceive of a fantasy world. I have always pictured the worlds I read as 'live-action' if you will, and end to put down books that don't live up to the realism I expect in characters or story.
Doesn't capture any of the complexity of the novels at all. Overlook's covers are the best I've seen for Bakker's series. I'm with Chad - if I saw this in the bookshop, I wouldn't even pick it up.
Damn, those are bad. I also would not pick the books up if I saw them in a bookshop. Fortunately I know the story and it certainly deserves more than these covers.
You know, these covers take a lot of flak and deserve every bit of it because they are really bad, but they do, somewhat, accurately depict scenes from the books.
The first is Cnaiur with his Chorae during the battle with the Nansur. Quite a bit overblown actually, since Cnaiur's reaction was more of a run-the-fuck-away-and-try-not-to-die-like-the-rest-of-your-ignorant-people thing than boldly making himself a target for someone wanting to snag a rare anti-schooman relic. But hey... they got close, which is more than you can say for a lot of cover depictions these days, and the little details like the light coming from the schoolman's eyes and mouth is nice and the thing with the dragons is one of their spells, I think.
The second is actually Akka, but I am not sure he went after schoolmen after his bout with Esmi... I can remember him tearing into the regular soldiery though.
Of course, I could be wrong. It has been a few years since I last read the books.
Actually, it reminds me of the Russian covers for some of Erikson's books. They are horrible, laughably so, but they do depict scenes from the book. Hell, the cover for Deadhouse Gates has Fiddler fending off the Dhenrabi with his cusser-firing crossbow, which is terribly executed, but rather more interesting than a horde of people running in front of a sandstorm.
At the very least, have to give them credit for not just pulling something out of their ass.
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