Sunday, 27 January 2008

Crap fantasy book covers #1

Fantasy fiction has been around for a long time. We've seen some great books and some not so great books. The same goes for the covers. I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the worst fantasy book covers out there. I'm sure everyone knows the old saying "Never judge a book by its cover", but some of these covers are so horrific you'd be forgiven for dropping the book and running out of the bookstore screaming. So without further ado, the cover that has the unfortunate honour of being the first in our little series, is the cover for The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson. Here it is in all its glory:





Look at it. It's horrible. It looks like Santa's sleigh plowing into the side of a mountain with presents spilling everywhere, two of Santa's helpers and four of Gollum's younger brothers all flailing around in disarray. Not just that but the colours just seem too bold as well; the red text for the title borders on being offensive. They should give away free sick bags with this version of the book. The worst thing of all is that Erikson is a fine writer and it must hurt to have this turd of a cover on one of his books. Still, the one redeeming feature is that at least something is happening in the picture. There's far worse than this cover out there...

Crap-o-meter rating: 8/10

2 comments:

Carl V. Anderson said...

I don't have any qualms agreeing wholeheartedly with this one. It really is the kind of cover that would put me off picking up the book and even considering it.

James said...

That's why it is such a shame - Erikson is a very good writer and so it sucks that one of his books is stuck with a dire cover like this.