Absolutely incredible. Just as impressive are some of the preliminary sketches by artist Dan dos Santos:
From the tor.com blog post about the cover:
By this time in the series I thought we should start to see some of the many strong women in The Wheel of Time. After collecting notes from various people, and an extended lunch with Tor.com’s resident life-long WoT-fan Megan Messinger, it became apparent that Moiraine’s final action in The Fires of Heaven was a moment well worth commemorating.
It didn’t take long to decide who the artist should be: over the past seven years, Dan Dos Santos has risen to be one of the most admired voices in the field. His talent for painting preternaturally beautiful women and his mastery of an intensely chromatic palette made him an easy choice for depicting Moiraine.
The trick, it turned out, was showing a lead character in an atypical moment: a fight scene. Dan’s answer was to go beyond the actual fight and into Moiraine’s thoughts prior to the sequence, where she envisions putting several key elements into play that aid other characters on their journey.
To the new-comer, it’s a striking image of a woman amongst something chaotic and magical; to the fans, it commemorates a character at a deeply consequential moment while foreshadowing events in further books.
It’s hard to believe, but each cover in the series has been better than the last. I absolutely cannot wait to see the series re-issued in a physical format with these covers. Another bravo to Irene Gallo and the art department at Tor Books!
@adribbleofink Awesome art! BTW, you misspelled “Heaven” in your title.
@profexorgeek Ack! Thanks.
Brilliant stuff.
Yes really nice.
Why using the terrible painting of the Gathering Storm for hardback and waste this beauty on an ebook ?
To entice people into buying it?
To be fair, the horrible cover for The Gathering Storm probably created much more online buzz than if it had had a mediocre (or even good) cover.
pretty, I like the dark one at the bottom best.
I have to comment on the guff from the publisher on this cover.Its a top class painting ..5 stars and is beautiful but to say that we wanted to choose a action scene then went for a scene that invloves her inner most thoughts and blahhh. its a great picture but it in no way shows me her going through some sort of emotional torment prior to a fight scene.it shows me that the artist wanted to depict a simple scene to easier paint it. No harm in that but dont give us all this blahh.A fight scene or action scene would have been more difficult to do for artist.so he paints to his best ability which is female faces.Its pretty picture and a lesson in skin tones but don not come out with this BS about it being deeper than it really is.Typical americans talking hype over something that you can quite clearly see is just a pretty and expertly executed painting.
Sam
[…] recognizable scenes in the entire Wheel of Time series. My favourite in the series so far is still The Fires of Heaven, but it’s nice to see Tor change pace and provide a frenetic action scene to accompany the […]