Lord, that’s… I just don’t have words.
I nominate Are You Hungry Tonight?.
Not only does that look like a heavy metal album cover, Google tells me that it actually was a heavy metal album cover.
I was going to use that one, for all those reasons, but hey, her new book cover is just about as bad.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1451637624/ref=dp_image_text_z_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
I would dearly like to get my hands on the breast-obsessed jackass who decided on these covers.
A friend of mine who is a graduate in book-publishing once told me that in the industry it is a well-known fact that the worst illustrations were made by professional artists. At first I was surprised to hear that, but then remembered my personal experience and realized she was right. When I was a kid, I was really frustrated by the illustrations in The Hobbit for example (the Bulgarian edition I mean). Bilbo Baggings looked so mean and greedy as if he wanted to kill all the dwarves and steal Smog’s all treasure. Orcs were so skinny and disproportionate that I was wondering how they could stand on their feet, let alone fight. The dragon Smog had so small wings that compared to them even T. Rex’s rudimental paws looked big… Almost all the illustrations had very little in common with the story! They looked that way as if the illustrator took the characters from another book and used them in J.R. Tolkien’s story… Though the illustrator was a professional artist…
I guess many of the other readers and writers could share such examples too? And many of them would agree with my opinion that for some of my books many authors must use their own illustrations? I guess if I hired a professional artist for some of my works then probably my Mountaineers would be clean-shaven, the mermaids’ hair would get wet all the time, the Brown faces would look like the Afro-Americans of today (and all the readers and critics would accuse me of being racist), etc. Of course, every rule has its exceptions, there are amateur illustrations and covers that look awful. It seems I’m not the only one who thinks many professional covers, illustrations suck…
Reminds me of Mercedes Lackey, who gets around the problem by having her husband Larry Dixon do the illustrations.
And a wise decision that is. The illustrations in the Gryphon trilogy are some of my favorite illustrations in any book.
Wow, horrid. I have seen that face as someones forum avatar somewhere but hadn’t realised it was being used ironically (at least I hope it was!)
Two heads “like sea serpents” – check
Furry braincase hump – check
Three legs – check
Pretty solid on accuracy IMHO. Not exactly a great work of art overall, but what can you expect from 60’s-70’s SF?
Apparently I have my books mixed up because when I read The Running Man there were no homicidal American Gladiators in it.
Would have been a BRILLIANT illo for the movie “Rollerball.”
I love that cover, but it really does tell you nothing about the contents of the book other than “medieval” in that it looks like a medieval book illustration. A story of the happy residents of the Shire as they live in a peaceful idyll, untouched by war, is what that illo says.
Yeah, that one sucks, too. There’s a little less stuff in it to get wrong, but that apparently just gave him more time to get everything thoroughly wrong.
Agreed. I like all of his illustrations, really, but the ones in the Gryphon trilogy were brilliant.
Maybe it’s just me, but I pictured the necks as being much more substantial than that, but I guess it’s the overall cartoonishness that bothers me most.
Someone on another forum started a thread on this same subject, even linking to the same site dangermom did. I recalled this thread when this cover was posted and I started laughing out loud from its sheer over-the-topness (zoom in a little for the full effect). Someone on the other forum called it the “most testosterone laden thing” they’d ever seen.
