Brain Dump: Book Covers
I'm letting my review for Knife of Dreams percolate through my head, but this keeps coming up, so I wanted to get it out of the way.
The cover of a book is designed to do exactly one thing: entice a potential reader to purchase it. Now there are many ways to go about that, and one of the most traditional is to find a scene or a character from the book and illustrate it. Michael Whelan is my favorite example of this style - he is not only a highly skilled artist, but he is able to choose a scene that draws a browser's interest. Take this one for example:
Now I have no idea what book this is, but I want to read it. It's a moment of contact, two obviously alien cultures communicating. What are they talking about? How are they even talking to each other? What could bring such different individuals together? How about this one:
Vivid, tense, interesting. Who is this guy, all dark and scary? Is that volcano behind him his doing? I would definitely pick up either of these books. Now look at the cover to Knife of Dreams.
Four people standing around a table talking, at least two of whom look extremely bored.
These covers, done by Darrell K. Sweet, have been a poke in the eye to readers of The Wheel of Time pretty much from the beginning of the series. Sweet has, again and again, managed to paint covers that show that wherever his artistic talents may lie, cover art is not something he should be doing.
First of all, of all the moments in this book to illustrate, why choose this one? There's the rescue of Faile and the others from the Shaido, Egwene facing down the White Tower, Nynaeve leaving Lan in the Borderlands to build an army for the Last Battle, the assault on Caemlyn by factions for the throne of Andor, Mat fighting the Seanchan who are trying to kill their own Daughter of the Nine Moons.... Hell, Rand facing down Semirhage - Semirhage of all people! How could Sweet look at all of these moments and say, "No, I think I'd rather illustrate the scene where Perrin tries (futilely) to get Galina to give him information about the Shaido camp." Not even a pivotal scene in the book, just one to set up the climax.
What's more, readers of the book would be forgiven for being insulted by the artwork. Take Perrin, for example: He's described as being tall - not as tall as Rand, but still tall - with a blacksmith's build. His hair and his beard are described - repeatedly - as dark and curly. Not sandy and straight, and he's not the shortest guy in the room. The guy is the mustaches is a minor character whose name I can't remember, but I'm pretty damn sure that the tall red-haired guy looking at us like he's begging to be let out of this horrible cover is Gaul. An Aielman. Wearing a sword.
There's no way around that - it's pretty well established that the only really tall people with red hair in this world are the Aiel, and it's been said over and over again that the Aiel will never, under pain of death, touch a sword. In an earlier book, Aviendha gives a sword to Rand, but she carries it wrapped in blankets, and even then she carries it like she's carrying a live, angry cobra. Showing Gaul carrying a sword suggests that Sweet has never actually bothered to read this series, at least not in any detail.
From getting the number of people in the Two Rivers Exodus wrong in The Eye of the World to "Rand-as-Elvis" in Lord of Chaos, from painting Trollocs as men in armor to the repeated variations on "People on Horseback" in more recent books, all I can conclude is that Sweet has an iron-clad contract to do this series. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure he would have been replaced by now - maybe even with Whelan, given the popularity of the series (and let me just say that I would pay handsomely to see Whelan do Wheel of Time in the inevitable Collector's Edition after the series is finished - are you listening, TOR?)
The most recent book, The Gathering Storm is no exception - it's static and dull, and Sweet does everything he can to draw our attention away from the loss of Rand's left hand - something we should not be ignoring. Hell, it could be argued that this scene didn't even take place in this book, but in the previous one. And who the hell is that blonde woman behind him?
It seems this does show a moment from this book - in chapter 11 - wherein a soldier suddenly turns into a flaming pile of tarry goo. Once the fire has burned away the front of the building, it is put out and then Rand comes out, shaking his fist at the sky. But this just proves my point - rather than show the soldier's horrible transformation, or Aviendha trying to put him out by throwing a river at him, the cover depicts Rand impotently yelling at... no one. And if that's supposed to be Aviendha behind him, I'll eat my shorts.
This is why I'm glad that the Orbit international editions did away with Sweet's artwork and instead settled on a simple, minimalistic cover style that I really like:
And this bit with the clouds is fancy - usually the background is just black.
Keep in mind, of course, that the fans of Wheel of Time would buy this book even if the cover was just the infamous "Goatse" image NO DON'T GOOGLE IT with the title drawn on in crayon.
I've looked around Sweet's website, and the man does have some good work up there, where he's made much better decisions than he did with his Wheel of Time covers. So I don't know what's going on, really. And I'm certainly not suggesting that I could do better. I just know that there are those out there who can - and should.
Okay. That's out of my head now. I can go to work.
The cover of a book is designed to do exactly one thing: entice a potential reader to purchase it. Now there are many ways to go about that, and one of the most traditional is to find a scene or a character from the book and illustrate it. Michael Whelan is my favorite example of this style - he is not only a highly skilled artist, but he is able to choose a scene that draws a browser's interest. Take this one for example:
Now I have no idea what book this is, but I want to read it. It's a moment of contact, two obviously alien cultures communicating. What are they talking about? How are they even talking to each other? What could bring such different individuals together? How about this one:
Vivid, tense, interesting. Who is this guy, all dark and scary? Is that volcano behind him his doing? I would definitely pick up either of these books. Now look at the cover to Knife of Dreams.
Four people standing around a table talking, at least two of whom look extremely bored.
These covers, done by Darrell K. Sweet, have been a poke in the eye to readers of The Wheel of Time pretty much from the beginning of the series. Sweet has, again and again, managed to paint covers that show that wherever his artistic talents may lie, cover art is not something he should be doing.
First of all, of all the moments in this book to illustrate, why choose this one? There's the rescue of Faile and the others from the Shaido, Egwene facing down the White Tower, Nynaeve leaving Lan in the Borderlands to build an army for the Last Battle, the assault on Caemlyn by factions for the throne of Andor, Mat fighting the Seanchan who are trying to kill their own Daughter of the Nine Moons.... Hell, Rand facing down Semirhage - Semirhage of all people! How could Sweet look at all of these moments and say, "No, I think I'd rather illustrate the scene where Perrin tries (futilely) to get Galina to give him information about the Shaido camp." Not even a pivotal scene in the book, just one to set up the climax.
What's more, readers of the book would be forgiven for being insulted by the artwork. Take Perrin, for example: He's described as being tall - not as tall as Rand, but still tall - with a blacksmith's build. His hair and his beard are described - repeatedly - as dark and curly. Not sandy and straight, and he's not the shortest guy in the room. The guy is the mustaches is a minor character whose name I can't remember, but I'm pretty damn sure that the tall red-haired guy looking at us like he's begging to be let out of this horrible cover is Gaul. An Aielman. Wearing a sword.
There's no way around that - it's pretty well established that the only really tall people with red hair in this world are the Aiel, and it's been said over and over again that the Aiel will never, under pain of death, touch a sword. In an earlier book, Aviendha gives a sword to Rand, but she carries it wrapped in blankets, and even then she carries it like she's carrying a live, angry cobra. Showing Gaul carrying a sword suggests that Sweet has never actually bothered to read this series, at least not in any detail.
From getting the number of people in the Two Rivers Exodus wrong in The Eye of the World to "Rand-as-Elvis" in Lord of Chaos, from painting Trollocs as men in armor to the repeated variations on "People on Horseback" in more recent books, all I can conclude is that Sweet has an iron-clad contract to do this series. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure he would have been replaced by now - maybe even with Whelan, given the popularity of the series (and let me just say that I would pay handsomely to see Whelan do Wheel of Time in the inevitable Collector's Edition after the series is finished - are you listening, TOR?)
The most recent book, The Gathering Storm is no exception - it's static and dull, and Sweet does everything he can to draw our attention away from the loss of Rand's left hand - something we should not be ignoring. Hell, it could be argued that this scene didn't even take place in this book, but in the previous one. And who the hell is that blonde woman behind him?
It seems this does show a moment from this book - in chapter 11 - wherein a soldier suddenly turns into a flaming pile of tarry goo. Once the fire has burned away the front of the building, it is put out and then Rand comes out, shaking his fist at the sky. But this just proves my point - rather than show the soldier's horrible transformation, or Aviendha trying to put him out by throwing a river at him, the cover depicts Rand impotently yelling at... no one. And if that's supposed to be Aviendha behind him, I'll eat my shorts.
This is why I'm glad that the Orbit international editions did away with Sweet's artwork and instead settled on a simple, minimalistic cover style that I really like:
And this bit with the clouds is fancy - usually the background is just black.
Keep in mind, of course, that the fans of Wheel of Time would buy this book even if the cover was just the infamous "Goatse" image NO DON'T GOOGLE IT with the title drawn on in crayon.
I've looked around Sweet's website, and the man does have some good work up there, where he's made much better decisions than he did with his Wheel of Time covers. So I don't know what's going on, really. And I'm certainly not suggesting that I could do better. I just know that there are those out there who can - and should.
Okay. That's out of my head now. I can go to work.