These collections of books were submitted by Eron Rauch. Thanks to Eron for making my day full of Icelandic volcano ash that little bit easier! Check out Eron’s site www.eronrauch.com which shows off some of his great photography, some of it also brilliantly nerdy!
Eron Comments: The first of three in this series. I mean, how else do I explain it more than the title “Camelot in Orbit”, except I don’t really understand logic of the title, since they seem to be on another planet. I guess technically that planets are in orbit, but that’s rather redundant. Also, King Arthur seems to be riding a beaked dinosaur that is so pathetic that He-Man would be caught near it. I mentioned that before right? A fecking armored dinosaur.
Eron Comments: The second in the series, I think, I mean it’s hard for me to care really, but this cover is passably bad until you notice the creepy-as-sin inbred ewok/mogwai knock-off sitting just to the bottom left of the girl. Staring. Into your soul with hollow black eyes. Seriously the stuff of nightmares.
Eron Comments: The third in this utterly original series. Which features “Magick” with the added “k” which must mean serious fantasy is about to be had! In addition, we get a phenomenal rendering of the back of some random knight and a severely constipated dragon trying desperately to crap himself in terror at the War of the Worlds spaceship blowing the hell our of it’s castle with a laser that comes from nowhere.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Have to say, I absolutely LOVE the first two (usual caveats about them being of a time etc etc). The third, however, is an unmitigated disaster.
When genres collide . . .
April 15th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Have just spotted the truly terrifying dead-eyed teddy on number two. Which has dented my enthusiasm somewhat.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I more or less agree with you Simon, however the first cover for me is spoiled by the tag “behind the glitter of knighthood…”, i’m not sure i have ever read a fantasy novel where the knights can be described as “glittery”.
The second cover also mentions flowers.
If the third cover had mentioned hair stylists i would start to question the manlyness of the “knights”.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
It kinda looks like in the third picture no one is actually trying to stop the space ship.
The dragon also looks like he is taking a dump.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I also noticed something after I sent these in, which is that for the second cover, the tagline “Here magic works and knighthood is always in flower” is lacking any punctuation at the end of the sentence. Sheer class and professionalism!
April 15th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
On the second book there is also a sun playing shot-put with a moon!
April 15th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
I thought you said Eron Raunch?
April 16th, 2010 at 11:30 am
“A secret star war”. What, only one? Even George Lucas could muster up plural star wars, even though, strictly speaking, there is only one war throughout all the movies. Clearly the publisher didn’t want to raise anyone’s expectations too high.
April 19th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
That dead-eyed teddy actually looks as if its impaled on one of the knight’s lances and being held aloft as some kind of macabre standard…
April 19th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I think i would be alot more patriotic if the Union Jack was replaced with a Creepy Stuffed Teddy at the top of a flag pole.
Not sure i’d get alot of support for changing the flag to a teddy. Is it too late to run for the elections?
April 19th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Kitchen door is open!!! Kitchen door is open!!!! The door is ajar!!!! The gate between universes is ajar!!!!
(check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfQCje-aUck if you don’t get it)
April 19th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
IIRC, the teddy is supposedly some sort of mind-warping eldritch horror in its true form, so the artist is actually conveying the correct idea by making it creepy…
April 22nd, 2010 at 12:28 am
I’m most amused by the fact that “A Change Of Hobbit” (It’s a bookstore, ha ha.) seemed to be reselling them for more than the original cover price.
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:14 pm
I bought the first book, strangely enough from The Other Change of Hobbit, sequel store to the one mentioned above.
Couldn’t make it all the way through, but had to put in that the cover is done by an actually pretty sweet illustrator, Don Maitz. Check it:
http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9780312890179.jpg
I guess he hadn’t hit his stride yet.
April 28th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
RE: The second one
He has an army of small blue people. AWESOME.
April 30th, 2010 at 4:52 am
I couldn’t help but notice that no one else has mentioned the Ninja Turtle on the third cover. Right in between the kinght? and the dragon <.<;;; nothing above that is more horrifying!
April 30th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
I remember the cover of the guy on the bug? dinosaur? whatever… from the one time I saw it when it was first published – somethings are too terrible to forget.
July 1st, 2010 at 3:32 am
In re “A World Called Camelot”, this work pre-dates Star Wars and Gremlins, that Depthless Gazed Teddy is no Ewok/Mogwai knock-off, but rather, perhaps, their inspiration!
July 15th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
what a prescient artist! a creature from the world of The Dark Crystal on the cover of book 1, an Ewok on book 2, and a TMNT on book 3 – brilliant!
the girl on the second cover looks like a cross between a Stepford Wife and one of the Children of the Damned.
July 25th, 2010 at 6:23 am
Actually the books were quite good for it’s time. Remember the original book, ‘A World Called Camelot’ was orginally published in the late 60’s under the title ‘Let There Be Magick’. Read it as a kid…which made it better. 🙂
November 8th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Just wanting to mention that this post gave me the inspiration for my NaNoWriMo novel.
So, um, expect the genre to be expanded in the near future. …And I’ll be doing the cover art myself, which means it will probably suck in a not particularly remarkable manner.
December 15th, 2014 at 12:35 am
Is that dragon wearing lipstick, or did she stab herself in the mouth with her teeth?
December 21st, 2014 at 9:09 pm
Glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye, the title of this post appears to be ‘Cameltoe Collection’.
I thought, “Well THAT’S a new direction for this site.”
December 22nd, 2014 at 12:06 pm
A…..shrubbery!!!
August 24th, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Cover the First: The knight there looks to be riding a hybrid of an Anklyosaurus and this one beast of burden from “The Way of Kings”, with bull horns. Naturally, it fails to be as interesting as either of the previous.
Cover the Second: First, @SI, that’s not a sun playing shotput with a moon. That’s two stars, possibly a binary system of a red giant and a white dwarf. It certainly isn’t a particularly accurate depiction of that kind of binary system. Second, if that soulless abomination IS in fact that girl’s stuffed animal, I’m thinking she must be bloody terrified of it.
Cover the Third: That is one of the worst bloody spaceships I’ve ever seen. It looks more like the shells from “Mario Kart”. Also, that dragon looks like it’s having trouble doing a No. 2. Oi.
December 21st, 2015 at 2:56 pm
“Camelot!”
“Camelot!”
“Camelot!”
“It’s only a model.”
“Ssshh!”
April 19th, 2022 at 3:36 pm
In that voice. ‘In a world of actor cash grabs Richard Harris goes for Fort Knox.’