Sep 30
DPN Comments: Cat-man had only moments to reflect on some of the poor decisions he made in his life.
Published June 2011 / August 2012
DPN Comments: Cat-man had only moments to reflect on some of the poor decisions he made in his life.
Published June 2011 / August 2012
September 30th, 2013 at 11:15 am
Even if the lion-man with the extraordinarily-flexible lumbar vertebrae gets off a shot, at that range all that’ll happen is the flying swordsman will fall onto him with a sword in his hand and pin him to the ground as the flames get ever closer. Then, eventually, the lopsided castle will collapse onto them both.
But, hey! – John Ringo AND Harry Turtledove! I’m so buying that!
September 30th, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Nothing says ‘impractical’ like scalloped swallowtail wings on a dragon.
From where is that fire coming from, anyway?
September 30th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
So many lost Ting! opportunities on this cover. At first I thought the dragon butt had Ting! but it is only cover shine. Does Baen not enforce these basic cover art standards anymore?
September 30th, 2013 at 1:23 pm
Maybe it’s the hell where Furry publishers go.
September 30th, 2013 at 1:26 pm
Kitty-man has unfeasibly large man-boobs. I appreciate the artist’s dilemma: whether to provide human-positioned titties (upper torso) or cat-style nipples (all the way down), but the solution provided seems least likely of all possible outcomes.
September 30th, 2013 at 1:46 pm
I love that the mouseover text is just the absurd title, again. Absurd title IS absurd.
September 30th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
This looks like a complex mating ritual to me. Check out the dragons tail wrapped seductively around a furry lion man’s (wearing a furry lion tunic) leg.
September 30th, 2013 at 3:23 pm
You’re not even pointing it in the right direction, as the sabre-wielding dragon said to the cat person archery “expert”.
September 30th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
I was too busy looking at cat-man to notice at first that the dragon has an upraised weapon. Listen, if you’re a spiny, rainbow-winged, amour-headed monster with teeth and claws that has (apparently) just leaped out of a pit of fire, do you REALLY need a sword? That just seems like overkill.
September 30th, 2013 at 4:44 pm
The entire point to a projectile/ranged weapon is that it gives you the ability to strike your opponent FROM A DISTANCE..Apparently Catman has been exiled for the crime of Terminal Stupidity. Luckily for him long necked lizard/dragon man is about to cut short the length of his banishment.
September 30th, 2013 at 5:03 pm
That puny tail can’t possibly give any sort of counter-balance for the head and neck.
They both have claws so who is exiled? Are they both members of the clan? Is this fight over who gets to be the recording secretary at the annual clan gathering?
Where are the kilts?
September 30th, 2013 at 7:25 pm
Oh my, just another one of those Baen covers you rhapsodize for hours over. In addition to all the fine insights already rendered, I offer these obs:
•No way he catman could grip the bow like that given the length of his claws; he’d puncture his palms.
•Why does he need spikes on his bow? Is extra weight actually good for a bowcat?
•Just who does his armor anyway, Androgynous Warriors LTD? Why the breasts? And what is that in the groinal area? A codpiece? A cod? Not sure I want to know anyway.
•Try to count the number of joints on the dragon’s toes!
•What do they do for light and ventilation in that tower/castle thing built into the hillside?
•The dragon’s left wing seems to be clearly built around his left arm (which otherwise isn’t there). What’s supporting the right wing? (By the way, that’s a question I often ask in a completely different context.)
U.S.W.
September 30th, 2013 at 7:40 pm
The bow is a disaster. I studied bow making (bowyery?) briefly a year or two ago. Assuming Cat Chap has pulled the bow’s limbs back to the maximum draw, when he lets fly, the strings will be pulled halfway down the limbs. BUT, it doesn’t look like the bow is at its maximum draw. The top of the upper limb, around the nock, looks as though it’s pulled back properly, and so does the bottom of the lower limb. And then, round the riser…that bow looks impossibly straight. Perhaps, the artist had the model mime drawing the arrow, and then connected the parts up as best he could?
October 1st, 2013 at 12:06 am
@B. Chiclitz — The dragon has fractal toe joints! As you get closer to the toe the joints get smaller and smaller …
… or is that called Zeno feet?
October 6th, 2013 at 7:51 pm
It’s the Citadel of Chaos! From around three-quarters view rear.
October 7th, 2013 at 10:34 pm
They gave the dragon that shoots flames from both ends a sword? Seems pretty damned redundant.
October 7th, 2013 at 10:52 pm
“•What do they do for light and ventilation in that tower/castle thing built into the hillside?”
We have two buildings liked that in my city. One is a research building that stands free on its own property, but has no windows on 2 sides due to, one assumes, absolutely horrible architectural choices of the 70s and 80s. The other is a gigantic old icehouse, which has NO windows at all, from back when refrigerators were just big insulated boxes.
So maybe the castle is where the cat people keep their catnip harvest on ice during the off-season. Or maybe it’s just full of disgruntled office drones who slave away designing the next generation of high-tech feathery cat-toys while wishing to hell that they’d been the ones who got exiled.
October 8th, 2013 at 3:50 am
Exiled: Clan of the Pale and Sickly Toy Designers
December 19th, 2016 at 1:33 am
OH JOHN RINGO’S COVER ARTIST NO.
Baen commissions cover art by actual artists (“artists”?) and yet it comes out worse than the freaky British 60’s cover, or the current vogue for Photoshoppery.
The dragon is under-wingspanned and over-weaponed. As for the opponent, I’m going with “lion-person” and not risking a gender identification. Might be a lion-woman, might be a lion-non-binary-person, might be a lion-transman who’s fighting illogical dragons to raise money for top surgery.
(Last sentence amuses me due to the insistence of so many Baen authors and fans as to strict gender binary divisions. Lo, their covers fail them.)
Also, B’mancer (3) is right — this should have had so many Ting!