May 21
Click for full imageJessie Comments: This cover is so atrocious that every time I go to read it, I just can’t. It’s definitely among the top three worst covers I’ve ever seen.
Published 1995
That is epic. Simply epic! Thanks to Jessie!
(Average: 6.90 out of 10)
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May 21st, 2010 at 9:22 am
Shadow’s niece just won a piece of her soul at the expense of mine with that book cover.
May 21st, 2010 at 9:30 am
Ooh goody – a return to the world of Shadow, the elvan thief. I wonder if there’ll be dwerves and giblins too.
May 21st, 2010 at 9:35 am
I kind of like the cat-man-taur, even if the lighting is coming from about three directions. On Anne Logsto’s website she claims
“I started to write fiction as soon as I could put intelligible words on paper.”
I haven’t read the book but if the art is anything to go by…. well!
Doesn’t really look like a woman trapped in childhood though.
May 21st, 2010 at 11:06 am
Haha I actually love this cover. Hands down this is simply outstanding.
The art isn’t terrible but what greets your eyes is awesome. The man-cat-centaur’s head kinda looks like it has been photoshopped on there. Like they drew a cetaur and someone had to fix it, with a cats head.
Maybe he’s been for a flee treatment, hence the shaved chest.
May 21st, 2010 at 11:19 am
Brilliant. Never has a Cat-man-polarbear been so well drawn.
The “Elvan” girl looks like she has come straight from Larping.
May 21st, 2010 at 11:48 am
I can haz Nair kit and nife!?
oh and “YIF IN HELL!”
May 21st, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Cat-centaurs? CAT-CENTAURS? I thought Steven Brust invented those in his Taltos novels… as a semi-joke…
I mean, horse-centaurs have some practical application, because horses are tireless runners and can potentially give a bipedal friend a ride. But CATS? You want to take a snarling, scratching, furniture-ruining monster from hell and give it TWO MORE LIMBS?
May 21st, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Agrajag – Ah, but if you’d read the book you’d know that the artist was very subtly showing the light of the three sons that shine over this planet!
May 21st, 2010 at 3:31 pm
“My lower body and lynx head want to roll around in the catnip, yet my manly torso wants to hack it down! ”
May 21st, 2010 at 4:05 pm
To some women… this would be the perfect man.
May 21st, 2010 at 4:57 pm
“To some women… this would be the perfect man.”
I feel like asking.. no, I’ve decided I don’t want to go there.
What are those things on D and P? Torches?
And that late 80’s/early 90’s style sweatband just tops it off.
May 21st, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Centaurs have human heads of course. Do you think they were worried that if they carried that through with this bizarre Cataur people would just think it was a rubbish centaur so they gave it a cat’s head as well?
I want to see a book with a hippotaur on the front.
May 21st, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Let’s think this through for a moment. That’s a cat’s body, and a cat’s head. In between the body and the head – where usually would be a NECK – is the torso of a man.
This isn’t so much a centaur as a cat with a man-torso-neck. Weird.
In any case, he must be related to the I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC centaur with mini-me forearms.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:42 pm
The cat head is in proportion to the man torso, which makes it too small for the cat body.
May 22nd, 2010 at 2:05 pm
The cat head is in proportion to the man torso, which makes it too small for the cat body.
Dude. It’s a cat’s head on a human body (on a Puma’s body too). I don’t think proportions even come into play here.
May 22nd, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I still think there’s been some polar bear ancestory there. The front paws are definately bear.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:40 pm
For a 7-feet-tall, four-legged humanoid I don’t think a huge unbalanced poleaxe is a safe weapon.
Imagine him hitting his own back with the pole every time…
Also, the title is more derivative than anything the Fantasy Title Generator can come up with:
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/zztitlegenerator.html
“Dagger’s Point?” Yes, a dagger has a point… and this is profound because…?
(Sequels: Dagger’s Handle, Dagger’s Hilt, Dagger’s Cut, Dagger’s All Mucked Up With Orc Blood…)
May 26th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Though I have to say that I do find the concept of a cat-centaur is kinda cool…though…why is he dipped in bronzer?
June 17th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Teal and orange — not just for movies! http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html
July 21st, 2010 at 1:45 am
I loved these books as a teen. The cover is a little strange, but it does depict characters from the books (though I recall the cat-man having two sets of arms, but maybe I’m not remembering it properly).
December 4th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
They are so cute in the pet shop window, but now we must quest for the one who can empty the litter tray?
May 31st, 2012 at 2:04 am
I liked the Shadow trilogy that preceded this, so, assuming it too would be good, I read it…
However, DeadRobot’s comment at No. 6 ( “YIF IN HELL!â€) is an unfortunately accurate summary of the last half of the book.
Considering the comments on this cover, I guess it gets the idea across fairly well. I should have taken warning.
By the way, @ A. R. at No.17, this was actually the sequel to “Dagger’s Edge”. I’m sure that if the series was continued, your suggestions would have been next.
@ nicholas at No. 2: The author spelled it “Elvan” through the whole series. We can’t blame the cover designer for that one.
May 31st, 2012 at 4:11 am
@Stevie T. “Considering the comments on this cover, I guess it gets the idea across fairly well. I should have taken warning.”
It’s *that* bad?
“The author spelled it “Elvan†through the whole series.”
I always wonder what mental process leads authors to do that kind of thing. Do they really believe stock fantasy race + name change = originality?
May 31st, 2012 at 11:51 pm
@Rachel– The concept of the cover getting across the idea wasn’t bad, It’s that the story ended up being what most people think of the cover (the yiffy furry stuff), that was not what I was wanting in a book.
I didn’t actually get that from the cover when I read it, it was only later that I realized that people get that vibe from it.
As for “Elvan”, I always kind of wondered if it was “world creation by typo.”
May 31st, 2012 at 11:55 pm
@ Rachel again–Sorry, I misread your comment as “Is that bad?” instead of “It’s that bad?” so if my previous reply seemed a little odd, that’s why.
Yes, it really is *that* bad when the story gets to the cat-centaurs. Kind of disturbing, actually.
February 28th, 2014 at 1:28 pm
This makes me grin so my face hurts. Good show.
October 4th, 2015 at 4:56 pm
Well, I think I’ve clicked past this cover a dozen times.
But I never noticed the long, dangly hairs between the Cat-taur’s front limbs until now…*shudder*
October 5th, 2015 at 8:29 am
@DSWBT: You mean the fur sausage. Now, there’s a vomit-inducing idea for a tag.
BTW, that creature is HUGE: Its hind legs seem to be sitting down!
October 5th, 2015 at 4:55 pm
@A.R. Yngve 17—I think what’s significant about this Dagger’s Point is that it has embedded itself in her upper right thigh.
Smarts, I imagine.
March 16th, 2016 at 2:49 pm
@agrajag #3 (feels weird to be replying to a post that’s almost six years old. Maybe I should stop now. Naaaaaaaaahhhhhh….)
Anne Logston started writing fiction “as soon as I could put intelligible words on paper”? Late-bloomer – I know a few writers who were writinig fiction before they knew intelligible words. 😉
March 16th, 2016 at 4:57 pm
@JonK: never you mind! Welcome to GSS, where the party never ends and the threads never die!
March 18th, 2016 at 8:44 am
Welcome to GSS where threads get old but not unused (see picture).
April 16th, 2016 at 5:46 pm
Really, I would only worry if she keeps adopting them until she has 12 and she smells like wee.
September 30th, 2016 at 1:46 pm
‘…but don’t you poop out of that hole?’
October 6th, 2016 at 8:58 am
Why does the blurb command an Elvan thief to return to the “World of Shadow”?
January 18th, 2017 at 10:26 pm
Cat-taur seems to have a puma body, but the head of a smaller cat, possibly a lynx or bobcat, yet enlarged. (Come to think of it, the puma bit is too big as well.)
Which makes “sense”, since he has the shaved, buff chest of a male model.
Something’s scrambling mammals along with stealing souls. It’s like those kids’ books where everything’s divided into 3 sections so you get a cat head, businessman torso, and high heeled woman’s legs.
YIFF. Yikes. Particularly with cat-people. You know what’s on a cat’s wedding tackle, don’t you? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.
January 11th, 2022 at 12:53 pm
What’s the point of not having a pointy ‘O’ in the title. It’s the first thing I noticed. Shoddy quality control.
January 11th, 2022 at 4:04 pm
Catcentaur hates Mondays.
January 11th, 2022 at 11:48 pm
@Bruce: Girl is adamant about not cooking lasagna.
January 9th, 2024 at 4:32 pm
Cat-taur really should be armed with a million watt laser pointer.
January 9th, 2024 at 10:37 pm
No, the girl should have the laser, to keep cat-taur under control.
I do like cat-taur’s paw. Very much a kitty’s, it’s well-done. The torso continues to boggle me.
January 9th, 2024 at 11:36 pm
A cat and a Chippendale’s model had a terrible teleporter accident…