A few months back we brought you the news that Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy had some pretty awesome new covers made up for its Brazilian release this year. Well, with the recent success of the young adult series The Hunger Games and movie-goers picking up books that they feel may give them a similar experience, it seems the publishers over at Tor have seen an opportunity to market Sanderson’s Mistborn series to them and commissioned artist Sam Weber to create some covers for that particular audience.
Certainly, I feel it is a good fit. Sanderson’s protagonist, Vin, isn’t a million miles off Katniss (the girl in the cover even looks somewhat like her). Both lack strength and confidence, but go on to be pivotal parts of a team. Both are set in dystopian worlds and share that ‘against all odds’ theme. And, importantly in a YA, both feature that will they, won’t they romance that is filled with complication and uncertainty. Where they differ is that Sanderson’s books seem a more logical path for a reader to follow towards epic fantasy such as Lord of the Rings or The Way of Kings, for example. It has a Dark Overlord, it has Magic Systems, Politics, Religion, History and much, much more. As an advocate of epic fantasy, I say that if we can encourage younger readers to give epic fantasy a go and set them on a path towards our genre then lets do it!
Here are the covers:
Let us know what you think 🙂
Geoff Matthews
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
I’ve said before that I don’t really like covers with people on, but the positive side of these new ones is that we have a normal young girl, dressed normally – hurrah! 🙂
(then again, Vin looks about 12 on these covers, never 16-18 as per the books…)
But Vin was also dressed normally on the original covers too.
These covers suck…..
I reserve the right to say that the Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages covers for this set are pretty… underwhelming. I really liked Sanderson’s original covers, as well as some of the more abstract covers from other territories. However, these ones just don’t look that good. I think it’s the abundance of grey. Or it’s the overall design sense. It could even be the fact that the girl looks too young to be Vin. I’m not really sure as to what really sets me off about them, but these… well I personally can’t stand them.
If they boost sales among the youth though that’s great! This is an awesome trilogy that deserves as much exposure as possible.
Why does she a sword in the second one?
It’s a Koloss Sword from the book.
Hmm, i don’t really like these ones.
By far, the best has been the European version in my opinion, followed by the original American one.
The detail on the European art is gorgeous. It shows that the artist put a lot of effort into the cover, which is rare for fantasy novels from what i have seen!!
The Australian covers aren’t too bad either i guess but the art for the last in the trilogy uses the same art as the second book. (Second book – full body Vin, Third book – close up on Vin’s face only)