May 17
Click for full imageMangraa’s Art Direction: OK, the main character’s a hot chick, so slap a Barbie head on a soldier’s body, that’ll work. Make this cover look like the end of a Michael Bay sci-fi clusterf***! I want not one, but TWO ships blasting away at her, the entire city burning, maybe throw in a lava spout just to be safe. I want NO EMPTY COVER SPACE!
Published 2004
(Average: 7.65 out of 10)
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May 17th, 2012 at 10:02 am
“Hey, these guys are missing me deliberately so I can get to the end of the book!”
May 17th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Let me point out again that we desperately need a Behind You! tag.
May 17th, 2012 at 12:08 pm
The sequel, “Leasehold” was better. All part of the Tenants In Common sequence, featuring a crack team of sci-fi commandos/property lawyers.
May 17th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Well, say what you like, but this is a surprising change from the usual depiction of women in these kinds of situation. She doesn’t flash cleavage, we don’t get to see her butt, she doesn’t contort herself to make sure we notice she’s a hot chick — she’s just busy getting the hell out of Dodge.
Of course, the incompetence of the guys strafing her, plus the weird angle of her left arm don’t exactly add to the realism, but hey.
May 17th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Hep C, pleased to see another supporter for the BEHIND ME! tag.
I’m not so sure that’s a soldier’s body (as mentioned in the art direction). It might be a ice skater, minus ice and skates.
What gives with her left hand? Is she trying to punch that alien vessel? Or perhaps trying to carry it like a briefcase?
May 17th, 2012 at 1:29 pm
No, clearly she’s blocking the lava spout! DUH.
May 17th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
May I also point out that she’s got a superfluous katana on her back?
I misread the title, at first thinking Michael Z. Williamson was Earth’s Most Wanted Woman.
May 17th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
When I wrote BEHIND ME! earlier, I of course meant behind YOU.
Which is to say, behind HER.
And if that’s FREEHOLD, imagine how awful LEASEHOLD would be.
May 17th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Note the dramatically torn right sleeve, the lack of injury to arm in said sleeve, the lack of any injury to target fleeing on foot, the city on fire, squibs detonating around the woman … and put it all together: they must be Imperial pilots.
May 17th, 2012 at 6:30 pm
I’m trying to figure out what background bunker boy is pointing at. And if this was a Michael Bay movie she is about to flip onto her back while simultaneously drawing her pistol with her left hand enabling her to shoot down both aircraft then dispatching any surviving pilots with her katana.
May 17th, 2012 at 7:05 pm
@fred: that’s how you know this isn’t anime. Because if it was, she would be shooting down aircraft with the katana!
May 17th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
A cover so awful even the spaceship in the Baen logo circle is in the process of making a swift exit.
May 17th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
My eyes keep being drawn to her left arm. It doesn’t fit. It isn’t attached to her shoulder, but to her neck. It is flat and angular and lit differently from the rest of her. It’s not colored the same. The hand is a different size from her right hand. It does not look like a part of her. I have this unshakeable feeling that her real left arm is in front of her, cradling that gun invisibly and she’s got someone else’s disembodied arm flying in front of her shoulder.
May 18th, 2012 at 1:37 am
Too easy. You could spend all day making fun of Baen’s covers.
May 18th, 2012 at 7:39 am
I love the little German soldier on the right. Sitting in his bunker pointing at a plane ten feet away from him. Presumably screaming “Oh my god, look, it’s a plane!”
May 18th, 2012 at 10:02 am
@Alessandra. Let’s be fair– for all we know the woman is a mutant with an arm growing out of the back of her neck. Or it could have been grafted on in a diabolical experiment. Or she could be a “Thing”-type alien in the act of metamorphosis. It’s science-fiction, after all!
May 18th, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Maybe the 3 arms is what makes her “Earth’s Most Wanted Woman”
May 20th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
Wouldn’t it be funny if the actual novel was the story about a hard-working female lawyer who takes on heartbreaking custody cases in the future?
June 12th, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Earth’s most wanted woman, and that’s how ugly they draw her? For shame!
November 4th, 2012 at 11:23 am
But who are we kidding — despite the cover, fans will pick up the book because the moment they see the title, they’ll hope against all reason that it’s a sequel to FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD.
In fact, that’s why you should expect other “Heinlein Bait” titles in the future:
– FARNHAM’S STAR
– SUN BEAST
– STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND
– SAIL SHIP TROOPERS
November 4th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
STARS SHIP TROOPERS – celebrities go into business moving soldiers to the front.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:00 pm
Earths Most Wanted Woman meets Earths Worst Pilots!
February 5th, 2013 at 8:01 pm
I find the lack of skin, disturbing…
February 6th, 2013 at 4:16 pm
(using A-Team intro music)
In 2772, a crack she-commando unit was sent to prison by a man-centric military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These single/attractive yet strong and sensitive she-commandos promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The SHE-Team!
July 13th, 2014 at 9:40 am
The perspective: if this woman were depicted standing to attention she’d either have two metre long legs or a head the size of a coke can. No amount of Farrah- hair can disguise such a freakishly disproportionate arrangement.
July 21st, 2014 at 5:09 pm
The main character a hot chick? At least the cover doesn’t depict this. Inside the book however she is definitely attractive but comes out to be rather prude in a free love world of Freehold though she has her reasons as she migrated there from Earth. I prefer Marta Hernandez, another woman character in the book any day.
March 28th, 2015 at 11:37 am
Who the hell names their child, especially their daughter, “Freehold”?
September 14th, 2015 at 9:55 am
…though it does explicitly make it clear she’s not a paid woman.
Still, I can’t help thinking there must be a better way.
December 23rd, 2015 at 6:19 pm
Earth’s Most Wanted Woman
THE KATE UPTON STORY
December 24th, 2015 at 12:05 am
She sells country apartments.