If you don’t know what I mean by the heading of this post, drop by Jennifer Fallon’s webpage here and take a look at the Russian cover of her book Harshini. Then look at the Russian cover of The Tainted, Book 3 of my Isles of Glory trilogy, below. In Russian, the title means I believe, “Desecration”.
Do I mind? Of course not; my cover has several bonus additions, after all – more than a hint of bondage there, I think, not to mention a rather large cat, neither of which I actually remember being in the book.
(Remind me someone – was there a sabretooth somewhere that I’ve forgotten about?? To be quite honest, I do tend to forget all about the last book once I start working on a new series, let alone the series after that…but I am damned sure Blaze wasn’t tearing around dressed like the star attraction of a brothel for men with, let’s say, interesting tastes. Oh, and there wasn’t a pole dancer in the book either. But then – there also wasn’t a pole dancer in Harshini… )
I really, really love my Russian publisher. They are such fun people. And this cover is definitely better than the Romulans on the cover of Book Two (see the sidebar).
So, to my Russian speaking readers: enjoy! But please don’t expect bondage, pole dancers, or very large cats.
Interesting. I wonder whether they think their readership is primarily male (with um, particular tastes), or whether they believe their female readers all secretly want to be Xena? 🙂
But pussycats aside, I’m really pleased these guys are publishing your work. Hope it brings you plenty more rubles.
It is something I have always complained about that the covers on books have often absolutely no relation to the stories within. That Russian cover certainly doesn’t have any relationship to your story and surely pictures of it would make it interesting anyway, it is a great story. Still, as Ru said, I hope it gives you plenty of rubles which, I suspect, you will have to go to Russia to spend.
Either the pole dancer was a great success when previously used on a cover or the publisher is cutting costs by recycling old images.
It will be interesting to see if the giant humanoid cat is used again.
I read that in the early days of SFF in the US, a certain publisher insisted that all covers had to include a dragon even though most stories had none.
How odd. Perhaps there is something we’re missing about the majority of fantasy readers in Russia? I cant imagine where a large cat would have fit in the Tainted. There’s an awful lot of water that I’m sure the cat wouldnt have been partial to.
On a side note – Glenda, I see you’re reading The Name of the Wind. How amazingly enthralling is that book?? Of course, nothing grips me like your books do 😉 but I’d say that one was a close second.
Not to be too picky or anything… but it translates more as “The Desecrated” or “The Defiled” rather than “Desecration”. Not that it makes much of the difference, but it’s less divergent from the English version…
As for the pole dancer. That reminds me of how the cover of Alma Alexander’s The Secrets of Jin Shei and one edition of one of Lian Hearn’s Otori books (forget which, it’s not an edition I own) had the same stock photo of the same Chinese girl on the cover, just arranged differently, with different stuff around her. Of course, those covers WERE actually related to the stories…
You would think that readers would get kinda fed up with being misled. I can just hear the mumbling going on…come on, where’s the brothel scene, and when’s that damned cat coming??
Peter – not so long ago, believe me.
There was a dragon on the German cover of Havenstar.
Sarah – just finished the Rothfuss. Will blog about it soon.
Thanks Tsana…I relied on Babelfish!