Friday 2 November 2012

Cover art: Feist and Gaiman

Some cover art for upcoming books. First up is Raymond E. Feist's Magician's End (US version):



Normally I don't post much about Feist (that whole, 'Fourteen years since he last published a good book' thing tends to get in the way), but this is somewhat noteworthy as Magician's End concludes the entire 30-volume saga begun way back in 1982 with Magician, bringing to an end the cycle of riftwars and interdimensional chaos to plague the world of Midkemia. Feist plans to move onto other works and worlds (including an apparent SF series) for a while, which can only be a good thing for the quality of his writing. Magician's End will be published in May 2013.


Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman's first full-length-novel-for-adults in eight years, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, will be published in June 2013. Cover blurbage:
“They say you cannot go home again, and that is as true as a knife . . .”

A man returns to his childhood village seeking comfort in memories of his youth and the friend who long ago transformed his life.

Once upon a time in a rural English town, an eleven-year-old girl named Lettie Hempstock shows a little boy the most marvelous, dangerous, and outrageous things beyond his darkest imagination. But an ancient power has been disturbed, and now invasive creatures from beyond the known world are set loose. There is primal horror here, and menace unleashed—within the boy’s family and from the forces that have gathered to consume it.

Determined to have their way, these otherworldly beings will destroy a meddling little boy if he dares to get in the way. It will take calm, courage, and the cleverness of the extraordinary Hempstock women—Lettie, her mother, and her grandmother, to keep him alive. But his survival will come at an unexpected cost. . . .

Storytelling genius Neil Gaiman delivers a whimsical, imaginative, bittersweet, and at times deeply scary modern fantasy about fear, love, magic, sacrifice, and the power of stories to reveal and to protect us from the darkness inside—a moving, terrifying, and elegiac fable for every age.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fell off the Feist series several years ago, but I still think "Magician" is one of the best fantasy books.

insurrbution said...

Raymond E. Feist...he's on my Nemesis list. Reason - not finishing Riftwar Legacy. I was waiting for the final two books and....

Adam Whitehead said...

My understanding is that the LEGACY books did not sell very well (understandably: KRONDOR: THE BETRAYAL is one of the two or three worst books I have ever read) and his publishers asked him to press on with the main series instead.

brandon smith said...

um, Isnt feist dead?

Adam Whitehead said...

Is Feist dead? No, he isn't.

Roland said...

Adam, be glad you didn't read the two sequels then (Krondor: The Assassins, Krondor: Tear of the Gods), since they were much worse.

Erik M Held said...

When do the Riftwar books take a turn for the worse?

Adam Whitehead said...

I'd nail it down pretty specifically to between RAGE OF A DEMON KING and SHARDS OF A BROKEN CROWN (Books 3 and 4 of the SERPENTWAR SAGA). RAGE features Feist's best battle scenes and some of his most surprising twists, whilst SHARDS was a completely pointless bit of filler. The KRONDOR books that followed were probably his worst-ever novels. TALON OF THE SILVER HAWK was okay to dull, and I haven't read on due to overwhelming reports the series never recovers.