Cover Art

Cover Art | KING OF THORNS by Mark Lawrence

By Aidan Moher October 17th, 2011
KING OF THORNS by Mark Lawrence

Another Fantasy cover, another hooded figure.

So, why do I like this one when so many others have frustrated and left me feeling hollow? There’s panache, it’s got chutzpah, character, personality. Seemingly influenced by Michael Komarck’s famous portrait of Jaime Lannister, the main character of Lawrence’s trilogy just oozes charisma. He looks like an absolute jackass, but somehow you want to know more about him and the situation that led to him lounging confidently on a throne atop a pile of dead bodies. What’s he holding. Who is he?

It also helps that the cover is entirely illustrated, instead of a photo manipulation featuring Mark Charan Newton in a hood with a photoshopped sword of fireball super-imposed over his white knuckles.

News

An Aside | First synopsis for THE DAYLIGHT WAR by Peter V. Brett

By Aidan Moher October 13th, 2011
The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett

Continuing the impressive debut fantasy series from author Peter V. Brett, The DAYLIGHT WAR is book three of the Demon cycle, pulling the reader into a world of demons, darkness and heroes.

Humanity is fighting back. Although the night still belongs to the demons that arise as the sun sets, new wards and weapons are giving those willing to fight in the darkness a chance to retaliate against their core-spawned enemies.

But, as humanity is about to learn, not all monsters are confined to the dark.

Civil war ravages the north and south, battles fought between those who should be working together. It is up to Arlen – the Painted Man – and Jardir – the self-proclaimed Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer – to put aside their differences and bring their people to terms if they are to have any chance of saving their civilisation from demon-rule.

Not a lot to go on, especially for fans of the series who’re familiar with where the story left off at the end of The Desert Spear, but it’s encouraging nonetheless. There are a lot of eager people waiting for this novel. It should be interesting to see Jardir and Arlen forced work together as they had wonderful chemistry in The Desert Spear. Because of the common misconception, it’s also worth noting that this is the third volume in the cycle, but it’s not the final book. As far as I know, we’re looking at five volumes at the low end and likely more, given the success of the series and Brett’s comments about the potential length:

I have a rough outline planned for book three, which will be titled The Daylight War, and will focus further on humanity’s tendency to fight amongst ourselves even when demons are clawing at the door. I have many, many pages of notes for what comes next, but I haven’t yet arranged them into the final story arcs.

Given my feelings that The Desert Spear was meandering and somewhat self-absorbed, I wouldn’t be surprised if, down the road, The Daylight Road winds up being an early-to-middle volume of a long story (of potentially interconnecting stories featuring a large cast of characters.) I just hope that The Daylight War has more in common with The Painted Man and the first third of The Desert Spear than it does with the majority of the second novel. One thing is certain, though, and that’s great cover art.

Art

Art | The kitschy castles of George R.R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE by Kevin Cook

By Aidan Moher October 12th, 2011
The kitschy castles of George R.R. Martin's A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE by Kevin Cook

From Cook’s kickstarter campaign:

Taking my love for these books (and recent HBO television series), I set out to harness this inspiration and produce artwork in my preferred medium. My goal was to produce tasteful and minimalistic pieces that conveyed the emotions of their respective settings without sacrificing the spirit of the series. I also wanted to create something I could display in the house without my wife hiding it every time friends came over (she’s not too in to fantasy art).

And I’d like to share these with you – the Kickstarter community. When you pledge, you’ll be part of the premiere printing of these digital paintings. To make these unique originals, each piece will be numbered and hand signed.

I’ve set the project goal to meet minimum printing costs for a 500 print run, and cover continental US shipping costs. The prints are high quality, ready for framing, hanging, and displaying your Ice and Fire love.

So, what are you getting? I’ve created four digital paintings, each featuring a different castle: Stoic Winterfell, majestic King’s Landing, the vertigo-inducing Eyrie, and one in-progress piece. The last one is a surprise, but it will be a piece that burns against the cold*.

If funding is successful, all prints will be mailed within one week of the project closing. All artwork should be received late November, and well before the December holidays.

Everyone here knows of my love for fine art and nerd culture clashing together with beautiful results. Like these Middle Earth travel posters, these are a wonderful melding of a classic art style with Martin’s creations. Few fantasy series have such iconic set pieces as A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Red Keep, The Eyrie and Winterfell are immediately recognizable, even in their stylized form. Cook also promise (somewhat slyly, that Castle Black is also in the pipeline and will be available/included for those who fund his kickstarter campaign.

So, what’re you waiting for? Love this art as much as I do? All it takes is ten bucks and you’ll get a signed print of the four castles. Tell me that wouldn’t look great hanging above your computer desk. More Cook’s art can be found on his blog.

Cover Art

Cover Art | THE DREAMBLOOD DUOLOGY by N.K. Jemisin

By Aidan Moher October 7th, 2011
The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin

Since the release of her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin’s been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, Nebula and World Fantasy awards. It’s a tremendous novel (see my REVIEW), but I also think a lot of its success can be attributed to some of the early excitement and speculation created by the release of the gorgeous cover. Of course, cover art is never used as a metric when nominating for or judging these awards, but the novel gained some significant buzz among the blogosphere that likely wouldn’t have existed (especially for a debut novelist without much in the way of published short fiction) if not for the striking work of designer Lauren Panepinto and artist Cliff Nielsen.

I like these covers for much the same reason as Jemisin’s previous colour: impactful use of colour. As they stand (and this could very well change between now and the final polished versions), I feel that the typeface seems a little out of place, though I like that it’s been kept simple (instead of something like this, for instance). It could also be solved by using a foil-technique (as Orbit used on the paperback of Brent Weeks’ The Black Prism, also seen on the recent paperback release of Towers of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan), which generally looks sharp. In all, it’s a niggling complaint and I can’t wait to see the final copies in hand. Just as with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, I’m bloody excited for these novels based on the covers alone without even knowing what they’re about. I can’t think of higher praise for the designer/artist.

News

An Aside | Orbit Books ‘thrilled’ about first eBook-only launch, I’m ‘skeptical’

By Aidan Moher October 6th, 2011

The Hedgewitch Queen by Lilith SaintcrowWell, this is interesting:

We’re thrilled to announce our first ebook only publication from New York Times Bestselling author Lilith Saintcrow! We’ll be publishing The Hedgewitch Queen in December 2011, and the sequel, The Bandit King, in July 2012 in both the US and the UK. The series will be available across all digital reader platforms.

There’s an adage going around the publishing industry (generally in defense of eBooks being sold for the same price as paperbacks) that the cost of producing/storing/distributing/paying middle-men (ie. bookstores)/dealing with returns is negligible for publishing companies. The real cost, of course, is in editing/copy-editing/layout/cover art/royalties/marketing, which is the real meat of the success in the hearts and minds of readers. So, despite not needing to be stored/distributed/printed/returned/etc…, eBooks often cost the same or only marginally less than paper books. Of course, most of these tasks are done for the physical books (whether there’s to be an eBook published or not), so all that’s left is proofing and layout of the eBooks. Sadly, to anyone (like me) who’s read a fair number of eBooks, it’s clear that many publishing companies put little-to-know effort into proofing/layout of their eBooks. It’s not to say that *good* eBooks are cheap to produce, Lou Anders and Pyr Books (who produce some of the finest eBooks in all of publishing) would tell you differently, but that and eBook-only release of these novels suggest that Orbit’s experiencing something of a lack of faith in a more traditional Fantasy novel penned by an author known almost exclusively for her Urban Fantasy.

So, it seems strange that Orbit Books would be so excited about their first eBook-only launch of a novel (or, in this case, a set of two novels), so ‘thrilled’ to limit the audience of one of their premier authors, to publish a book with only a partial bit of their publishing oomph behind it.

Does it suggest that the eBook market has matured to the point where it’s a viable medium in which to solely distribute and sell novels? Orbit thinks so; many, many self-published authors (like John Locke or, until recently, Michael J.Sullivan) believe so. Or is it a case of a publisher trying to spit shine their lack of confidence in the novels being able to recoup the costs associated with a physical release? Lilith Saintcrow isn’t a small fry, she’s got a heck of a lot of readers. But what about those unfortunate fans that don’t own an eReader or have no interest in reading the novels off their computer screen/smart phone (via the free Kindle/Kobo/etc… apps)? And if there’s little extra cost associated with printing/storing/selling physical books (at least not enough of an appreciable difference to bring down the cost of eBooks), why not produce (even in limited quantities) a physical edition for those fans? It’s a daring experiment on Orbit’s part, and not one I’m confident will bear great fruit.

And what’s in it for Saintcrow? Higher royalties, presumably, but there’s no way that Orbit’s matching Amazon.com’s the 70% royalties that she’d get if she self-published the novels. Market penetration of eReaders is high, but even if 50% (which is being extremely generous) of her readers were willing to read eBooks, that’s still a hell of a lot of sales left on the table. Why limit a target audience when Orbit is more than capable of producing and marketing physical copies alongside the eBook release (like, you know… a normal book release)? To dip their toes in the water and see how Saintcrow’s audience responds to her shifting genre?

This isn’t a step forward for publishing, but a rather startling look at where the publishing industry might be headed. Is this a case of Orbit saving some cash, or taking a chance and publishing books that wouldn’t have been good enough for publication the old fashioned way. Either way, it’ll be one heck of an interesting experiment to watch. Educate me, because I’m not seeing how this is beneficial to anyone.