Friday, June 3, 2011

Song Of Ice And Fire Book Covers

Okay, so I've been on a huge George R.R. Martin kick. As much as I've said about his books, there's just so much more I could talk about (yes, he's definitely one of the most talented writers I've ever read).

Here's the covers for the Japanese editions of the books and I have to say...they look completely badass.








Are these seriously awesome or what?

The book covers for the American versions of the mass-produced paperbacks are boring in comparison.

13 comments:

  1. They look awesome. One of the things I love is seeing how the same book or series of books are depicted around the world. It inevitably takes on the culture and tradition of each country, and adds something very special.

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  2. Those are much better. It's like if you look at the Discworld book covers from the UK they look a million times better than the dull American ones. Why do American publishers like boring covers?

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  3. Rogue: for the same reason restaraunts in the US like bland food. And things like newspapers are written on elementary school level.

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  4. Very true Andrew. Also I suppose then they don't have to hire a real artist to draw anything and can essentially just use stock images.

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  5. Badass, yes.
    I like the borders (which, I realize, is not badass).

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  6. Much more interesting than a sword or a crown. My paperback versions are embossed, though...

    I'm curious about why there's so many covers in Japanese. Did they divide them up into shorter books? Because that would ruin my argument about why each book works in a complete way and it's not just ended in a random place.

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  7. Brent: I also wondered about that Brent. It would make sense to me if they divided them up into separate books because with a few exceptions, there is little intersection between the storylines. Additionally, it would allow me to pick and choose what I wanted to read. For example, now that I've got three books under my belt, and knowing what I know, I would skip all the Bran chapters, the Sansa chapters, and the Samwell chapters. They provide nothing in all three books and must account for at least 6-700 pages of stuff I don't give a crap about.

    Martin is a great author, but his arrogance in the power that he has as a writer abuses the reader (I'm going to make a post about this). The Sansa, Samwell, and Bran chapters should have been edited out. Nothing of note happens in any of those chapters that could not be summarized in four lines of dialogue. It's stupid and it's rude of the author to do that to the reader.

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  8. It's possible that what you're seeing is front and back cover art. Being somewhat familiar with manga due to years in the comic book industry, the Japanese often do art on both sides as opposed to the way we do it with just front cover art.

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  9. This is exactly my sorta art. I would be so honored if I got these sort of covers for my novel.

    These are badass to the 10th degree!

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  10. You're right in that these are minor characters that probably don't deserve their own POV. I don't even remember who Samwell is.

    Martin probably uses those chapters to give info furthering plot that he couldn't do from other character points of view. But that's just a guess, not an actual scholarly look at those chapters.

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  11. Beautiful! Makes me want to not only get published, but also translated!

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