I remember being in a bookshop a few years back (a second-hand one) and an elderly lady, maybe 75, tilted a book towards me and said “nice cover this, isn’t it?” Turns out I knew the book, it was Rivers of London, “Yes I said, it is very good too – it is about a detective who investigates crimes in London, but with a kind of fantasy twist to it…” She looked somewhat disappointed, then looked down at the cover again and said “Ow, I don’t like that stuff”.
I kind of regret saying anything and often hope she meant she didn’t read ‘crime’ as opposed to being put off by my revealing it was fantasy, but it always sticks in my mind. Although I’ve had lots of people tell me they’ve picked up a book because they really liked the cover, I can’t remember a stranger being so taken with a cover that they’ve had to turn to the nearest person to share its beauty with them.
Well, sadly I don’t have that lady’s e-mail or I’d have sent her the subsequent covers in the series, because although they’ve all followed the same kind of pattern I’ve never got bored of them, conversely I think some have actually been better (especially Moons Over Soho).
Today, Gollancz went and released the cover for the fifth book in the series, Foxglove Summer. They explain that this particular cover was a challenge for the author, Stephen Walters, because ‘Peter is hauled away from London and set down in the less than dense Herefordshire countryside’. This meant that there weren’t the sprawling, urban streets of London to use when creating the cover and less opportunity to fill it with the kind of puns, jokes and witty comments that Stephen has become known for.
Well, I for one think that for what Stephen had to work with he did a pretty good job:
What do you guys think?
Geoff Matthews
Julia Kitvaria Sarene