Friday 6 March 2009

Crap fantasy book covers #17

I was planning on just doing some linkies (see previous entry), but then I saw this dreadful cover and almost spewed up my lunch all over my desk.

It's difficult to determine what the worst aspect of this cover is.

Perhaps it's the bowl/mullet haircut sported by the protagonist, last seen adorning the head of He-Man, back in the 1980s.

Or maybe it's the fact that he's got his groin thrust out.

Then again, you could make a case for the exterior background. What's up with those squashed towers?

Seriously though, this sort of bland, generic cover really irks me. Fantasy gets a bad enough press a lot of the time, so why do we kick ourselves in the balls by having crap like this on the covers of our books? Sure, I get it - it's commercial. It sells books (for some reason). But can't we have something a little more sophisticated than some dandy staring lovingly at a sword in front of a poorly-realised background?

Crap-o-meter rating: 8.5/10

2 comments:

Todd Newton said...

Gross. Are you telling me this was released recently??

James said...

Amazon has the release date as July 31, 2007.