Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Kushiel's Justice

So awhile back I wrote about the Kushiel books and my issues, shall we say, with the cover art. The weird lines of the face, the clothing that looks like it's carved out of stone, the boringness of it. Well, the new book has cover art by someone else. And sadly, it's not an improvement. I mean, yes, the fabric looks more like fabric and whatever weird thing was going on with the faces on Palencar's women isn't going on here, but it looks cheaper somehow. The red curtain doesn't look great, the blend of colors seems less than subtle, and it just generally looks less appealing. But all this misses the central issue. That being, what the fuck is wrong with her right thumb? Because seriously, (and you can click on that picture for a bigger view) it looks like the artist got a bit Picasso at the end of that. Not cool.

In other things-that-annoyed-me-today news, while crankily riding the 6 home from work today I was reading the ads, as one does. Delta has an ad that says, "There's also more kiosks for smoother check-in." I'm sorry, but if a company can't even be bothered to follow basic grammatical rules in an ad that's going to be plastered all over the subway, do I really want to fly in a plane they're operating?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I've seen cranky rumblings about Justice at the Kushiel community. I'll probably get around to it sometime to see for myself, but my interest in the series has waned a bit so perhaps I'll save it for later.

Argh...certainly it's Ms. Carey's right to keep the cover artist...but I have to agree with your post. Especially considering the age of the character and the sensuality of the book, the art makes her look stiff and contrived.

Meg said...

Yeah, my problem is that she finally changed the cover artist (or the publisher did) which I think is a good decision for the reasons you mention, but the change still isn't an improvement. Maybe the problem is that the new artist is trying to mimic the old artist? After all, they still are doing the same boring thing.

What bothered people about the book? I had issues with it but still was entertained. I didn't think it was as good as the others but I did still enjoy it. It might not have been enough to make me to read more of her work if I read this one first.