A Dribble of Ink

Holy guacamole. Raymond Swanland‘s work on Cook’s The Black Company series has always astounded me, even if it often looks samey and retreads familiar ground too often. This cover for Towers of Midnight might be my favourite piece of art by him, and, perhaps, my favourite of all the Wheel of Time eBook covers. Just the look in Perrin’s eyes is enough to make me feel a little giddy… and I’ve not even read the book!

Irene Gallo, art director for Tor.com, has similar thoughts:

Raymond Swanland was on the top of my wish-list from the begining of this project. With so few books left, I couldn’t help but to look around carefully. Still, I never realy wavered from my first impression. I knew that Raymond could handle the dramatic lighting in play and be able to invoke tremendous power in the figure work. Even assuming the best, I was still blown away by the depth of emotion he captured in Perrin. Those eyes, lost in a trance, unminding of the natural world but absolutely focused on the chaos and activity around him…. You don’t have to know the story beforehand to get shivers looking at it.

Sure beats the tepid cover for the Hardcover release.

Nicked mercilessly from Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review:

Believe it or not, those two covers (each with its only wildly different title) are for the same book. See, here’s the synopsis:

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit – we do paperwork so real coppers don’t have to – and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England.

Now I’m a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there’s something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it’s falling to me to bring order out of chaos – or die trying.

It’s funny. I’d never in a million years pick up Midnight Riot if I saw it on the shelf—it looks like some sort of lame crossover between Harry Dresden and Jason Bourne; but Rivers of London catches my attention right away. I bet you can’t guess which cover belongs in the US and which is from the UK.

Just kidding.

Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe.

Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts – who cannot lie.

Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes.

Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts.

Very sharp. I like the way the alphabet is raining down on the city, an obvious nod to the importance of language and communication in the novel. You can also never go wrong with red, black and white.

My biggest nitpick is that the city is clearly a manipulated photograph, and while the background buildings look suitably SF, the foreground (along with the use of the Roman alphabet) is too familiar. Would Embassytown, ‘a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe,’ really look like Shanghai?

Still, a nice cover in my books.

So, I’m a little late to the party with this one, but better late than never, right?

One of my favourite aspects of the originally leaked cover was the red tapestry background. It gave the novel a more historical feel and felt confident. The new version feels more generically Fantasy (though that font still belongs on a John Grisham novel…) which will likely help it find a broader audience, but won’t look quite so dignified on my shelf. The new dagger is much better (and more believable), too. Oddly, the new cover seems like a crossover between the covers for the UK paperback and US Hardcover editions of Richard Morgan’s The Steel Remains.

And the official synopsis:

Summer is the season of war in the Free Cities.

Marcus wants to get out before the fighting starts. His hero days are behind him and simple caravan duty is better than getting pressed into service by the local gentry. Even a small war can get you killed. But a captain needs men to lead — and his have been summarily arrested and recruited for their swords.

Cithrin has a job to do — move the wealth of a nation across a war zone. An orphan raised by the bank, she is their last hope of keeping the bank’s wealth out of the hands of the invaders. But she’s just a girl and knows little of caravans, war, and danger. She knows money and she knows secrets, but will that be enough to save her in the coming months?

Geder, the only son of a noble house is more interested in philosophy than swordplay. He is a poor excuse for a soldier and little more than a pawn in these games of war. But not even he knows what he will become of the fires of battle. Hero or villain? Small men have achieved greater things and Geder is no small man.

Falling pebbles can start a landslide. What should have been a small summer spat between gentlemen is spiraling out of control. Dark forces are at work, fanning the flames that will sweep the entire region onto The Dragon’s Path — the path of war.

I’ve made my excitement for this book pretty clear… and this synopsis changes nothing. As much as I adore the unique setting in The Long Price Quartet, Abraham playing in a familiar playground is a dream combination. I will admit to having a problem with the name ‘Cithrin’, but that’s a small niggle amongst my general enthusiasm.