Peter Hamilton's publisher, Pan Macmillan, are going to be putting these new covers on Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, both done by Steve Stone. Thoughts? Personally I prefer the originals. These are still nice, although slightly misleading due to the military SF nature of them and just how little of the books have that theme.
10 comments:
The artwork is excellent, but I can't recall the orginal covers.
Love the art work, but I have to agree with you about them being missleading. I liked the original Judas Unchained better than Pandoras Star because it gave a hint of aliens.
I disagree about the "little" part of the military theme, considering the brutal war humanity fights against the Primes, while the anti-terrorist actions depicted on the cover, while not strictly military, are pretty violent too.
As "misleading", it's hard to say considering the complexity of the novels - I would say that any cover will be misleading to some extent
Liviu - thanks for posting. I think that while there is a military theme to the saga, it's the wider look at the war that I think is the main theme. Also, the military aspect definitely comes through more in JU, but these covers imply a front line ground war (IMO) and not the full fledged multi-planetary invasion/defense that the story covers.
I guess it's just me being picky, especially as I love the original covers so much.
I really like these covers. I've never read any of his stuff, so I can't comment on anything other than the artwork itself. Looking at these though, I would be tempted to pick one up.
Those covers are odd. The battles in the books (which form a very, very small part of PS and are a background element in JU) are not really prominent enough to dedicate entire covers to them, and these covers look like near-future SF thrillers more akin to the GREG MANDEL books than the more distant, galaxy-spanning space opera of the COMMONWEALTH SAGA. In addition, I don't recall the dropship on JU's cover appearing at any point in the books, plus the major ground battle campaigns of the two volumes take place on relatively low-tech worlds.
In this case, the original two covers were somewhat stronger.
According to PFH when I spoke to him at the Gollancz party in September, the long-term plan is to eventually rejacket all of his books.
Jason - I guess they fulfill the roll intended if they entice new readers to the books, which is good.
Adam - interesting about them planning to re-jacket all of Peter's work. With the fine example and quality of the art so far by Steve Stone I look toward to seeing them, but I can't say I'm not slightly worried about what the covers will depict.
guy looks like captian paint ball with his costume and the helicopter looks like lego or a childrens toy
I love both these covers and they would definitely make me pick up the book in store. I can't comment about how they don't match up with the story as I haven't read them, but they do give off sci-fi military vibe.
I haven't read anything by this author - would you highly recommend? If yes, which books should I read first?
BCC - It looks like Pan Mac have done the right job then - that's two people who've not read the books say that they'd pick them up based on these covers.
As for recommending - most definitely! I'd say that the best one to start with is Fallen Dragon - it's stand alone and is a military SF/space opera. If you like that then there you'll have the series to choose from :)
Post a Comment