We’ve featured work from Jian Guo before when we highlighted his incredible Chinese covers for Book of the New Sun and The Lord of The Rings. It seems China liked their dose of classic English-language fantasy and crave some more, this time something more modern in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn. Yet again, Guo’s talents have been called upon to cover the translated text…
For those who haven’t experienced Guo’s work before and are wondering what it’s all about, he calls it a kind of ‘glass painting style’ and uses it to depict scenes from all kinds of franchises, from Harry Potter to Marvel to World of Warcraft. You can enjoy more of his work here!
Anyway, back to today’s cover, The Final Empire (Mistborn, Book 1), Check it out:
We can see all kinds of great things on this cover. There is Vin, the Lord Ruler, an Inquisitor, Scadrial and more besides. It’s always interesting to see the Chinese covers, because they are so different to much of what we have here in the UK (I guess Jack Glass is close, but it isn’t science based or nearly as detailed).
Here’s the final book:
And because you are so into this, how about a (slightly blurred) The Way of Kings cover too?
In addition to the awesomeness above, we’ve heard this week that Mark Lawrence’s books are to be translated Chinese too (more traditional, but VERY cool cover here).
With all the great mythology and fantasy granted to us by China over the years, it feels good seeing some of our popular modern English-language fantasy tales making their way over there in return.
Jennie Ivins
Chinese fantasy novel covers are frequently some of the coolest on the market. They way they stylize them, as well as lay them out graphically, is top notch and very eye catching. I really like what they’ve done for Mistborn here. It’s a really nice cover, with some great usage of colour, and seems to really catch the feeling of the book without spoiling anything.
*drool