And the cover is…just as ugly!

The cover for the final volume of Robert Jordan’s and Brandon Sanderson‘s the Wheel of Time,  A Memory of Light, has just appeared. Although the artist has changed, from Darrell K. Sweet who passed away before completing his cover to Michael Whelan, I find the cover as appalling as the previous thirteen covers in the series… With the same frozen features and caricaturesque characters, unrealistic depictions (look at the way Rand holds this sword!) and women at the back. I know, I know, I should not expect highly creative covers for fantasy books, but other recent books have managed much better, from Sanderson’s Mistborns (other series of Sanderson do not succeed so well, incl. Elantris) to Abercrombie’s trilogy (and his The Heroes), admittedly the coolest covers so far, to Morgan’s The Steel Remains, to Karen Miller’s series of The prodigal mage … Even the alternative e-book covers for  the Wheel of Time are quite acceptable, so I really wonder why the publisher sticks at those ugly and outdated covers.  Anyway, this is now a sort of tradition! The final volume is planned for early January 2013, which is in tune with what Brandon Sanderson told us last year when giving a public lecture in Paris. There is much expectation about this book, the culmination of a series I started reading more than 20 years ago!