Jan 30
Tom Noir’s Art Direction: Now look Horne, you’re a good artist, but you’ve got a thing or two to learn. See, this cover of yours, it’s just not realistic. Does this guy look like he just walked out of an explosion? No. He still has body hair. The fire would have burned it all off! Take this back and I don’t want to see it again until it looks like he’s fresh from a wax job.
Published 1994
January 30th, 2012 at 9:45 am
“I am the god of hellfire and I bring you… opera gloves!”
January 30th, 2012 at 10:05 am
I have to admire the thoroughness with which the artist goes about illustrating the title. That’s a *lot* of knots!
January 30th, 2012 at 10:17 am
Just gimme a minute to stop laughing… and I’ll come up with a quip…
January 30th, 2012 at 10:19 am
“Sorry, love, I had an accident with the molten lead…”
“Really, darling — dipping your arm in the molten lead during a formal siege, it’s just not done!“
January 30th, 2012 at 10:29 am
So, is the fair maiden leaning against the mighty Cyber-barbarian, or riding his leg? Discuss.
January 30th, 2012 at 10:54 am
Book Three of the Song of Albion? Very popular in West Bromwich, I imagine.
January 30th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Definitely a case of bump-and-grind on the medieval dance floor here.
January 30th, 2012 at 11:22 am
Have you seen that Michael Bolton video taking the mickey out of himself and Captain Jack Sparrow? This could be the cover for that.
January 30th, 2012 at 11:54 am
I think it’s supposed to be Celtic knotwork, but it looks like macrame painted silver.
January 30th, 2012 at 11:57 am
Incidentally this is the third book in the Lawhead trilogy that includes the naked man plunging out of… something (The Silver Hand) and the buff, hairless surfer dude getting high off an old man (The Paradise War). Inexplicably when I spotted this in the bookstore I did not buy it so I could own a complete set.
January 30th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Speaking of “endless knots”, here’s one:
Which is the most embarrassing fact?
That
A) Someone thought this cover was a good idea
or that
B) lots of people actually bought the book after seeing the cover.
I’m stumped…
January 30th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Rachel J @ 5, riding is suggested by the support she is getting from her left hand. The right is about to slap her own bottom. The look of horror on her face comes from realising how drunk she is in a public place. The look on his face is not a burgeoning dislike of the third ring down on the right but the contemplation of algebra, football and cold showers.
January 30th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Where’s his other hand? And does it account for her slightly startled expression?
Anyway, this is all Jim FitzPatrick’s fault, for making such a good job of The Silver Arm. Though how it comes to be attached to someone called Llew, in Scotland I have no idea. All Celtic, I suppose, from a distance.
January 30th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
Celtic Fantasy, huh?
I have yet to see one book cover in that particular sub-genre that dares to accurately depict the mythological figure Dagda and his “club” (which was said to be so big it made a track in the ground where he walked)…
January 30th, 2012 at 6:08 pm
What strikes me is how dreary the whole cover is bright colors notwithstanding. The people look dazed and stunned, if not actually drunk, and really, really stereotyped. The woman looks like she is wearing a bedsheet tied on, with either another sheet or a bath towel pinned on at the shoulder. The man looks like he’s wearing a wrestling belt and his pants look like they were made from another bedsheet.
It’s like being at a really awful costume party with people you’re uninterested in. I can almost hear the overloud metal music and smell the cigarette smoke and spilled beer.
January 30th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
In honor of Nicol Williamson I give you Nigel Terry. Nigel? “Merlin? Is that you?” Which incidentally is a quip that could apply to every cover here, past, present or future. The Once and Future Quip.
February 1st, 2012 at 3:51 am
I am pretty sure the knot on the cover is not endless.
February 1st, 2012 at 8:30 am
@Ian. I bet it was endless originally– looks like it’s been cropped at the bottom. Doubtless Daniel Horne was busy congratulating himself on his splendidly literal realisation of the title, when he realised he’d left no room for the title itself, and had to rearrange things in a hurry.
February 1st, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Man: It sure is getting hot in here.
Woman: It sure is…hey!
August 27th, 2015 at 2:21 am
The silver hand has to be a prosthetic arm. It would explain why it’s not in proportion to his upper arm. Of course, that begs the question of how he has a functional prosthetic in a “Celtic Fantasy” world . . .
February 12th, 2016 at 1:19 pm
“I cannot self-terminate… I’m tied up in an endless knot…”
February 13th, 2016 at 8:09 pm
The Endless Not