As with the original trilogy, The Witchwood Crown's cover art is by genre star Michael Whelan. It depicts Hjeldin's Tower in the Hayholt, the great castle around so much of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn revolved.
The new book picks up thirty years after the events of To Green Angel Tower and the recent bridging novel, The Heart of What Was Lost. The novel will be released on 27 June.
I love that art! I mean, you can't go wrong with Michael Whelan, but even so, I just love old school, oil-painted fantasy cover art. We don't get enough of that these days. Lately, cover art seems to fall into one of two categories: the hooded and/or sexy main character (hooded if it's a man, sexy if it's a woman); or a single generic object (usually a sword or crown) with the author's name and the book title taking up 75% of the cover space. And it's a shame, because one thing that drew me to the genre as a kid in the 80s and 90s were the epic oil paintings on the covers, depicting exciting scenes from the book, or mysterious landscapes, or best of all, dragons! I couldn't wait to read those books and see how those scenes actually played out, or visit those locations with the characters. I really miss that-- I really miss judging a book by its cover! I miss browsing in the bookstore and picking out something I've never heard of just because the artwork makes me want to find out what's inside. In fact, that's how I came to be a Tad Williams fan in the first place: I was intrigued by the Michael Whelan art on the first paperback edition of City of Golden Shadow (which at the time was simply titled Otherland)...
ReplyDeleteOtherland, man... that deserves a reread sometime soon. That was something else.
ReplyDeleteAdam, you've made a few passing mentions of this quartet, but I haven't seen you review it anywhere. Am I missing it or is it still on the TBR pile?
An OTHERLAND reread definitely will happen, but I suspect not for a while.
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