Burns redeems himself

Millennium has just released the first half of THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN in the UK under the title SHADOW AND CLAW, as the leadoff title in their Fantasy Masterworks series; SWORD AND CITADEL follows in December. SHADOW AND CLAW is a nicely-produced trade paperback, reprinting the UK hardcover text, which is much more readable than that in the Tor Orb edition. What's more, Jim Burns has provided a fairly impressive cover illustration, far superior to his SHORT SUN covers; it shows Severian somewhat in Pennington mode, against an effectively archaic urban backdrop. A welcome change.

Redeems himself? That cover easily plants itelf on my "worst cover ever" list, it's amazingly ugly, his OB'sW cover is much nicer. I think they should use Pennington's old Shadow of the Torturer cover, it pictures almost the same scene, but is infinetly more atmospherical and beautiful. What's the difference between the UK hardcover text and the test in the Orb edition? Are all the titles in Millennium's Fantasy and SF Masterwork series trade paperbacks? (There are generally three different sizes of paperback's in the UK it seems, one is the size of a normal massmarket paperback, one is the size of a normal hardcover and the last one is somewhere in between. Are we talking about the hardcover sized type here?) // Jesper Svedberg

--- Jesper Svedberg

Tastes differ; and compare the Millennium cover art to the Sword & Sorcery bilge on the Orb cover! As for the Millennium text and format: the hardcover text they've reprinted is of a much more readable size than that of the Orb edition, which was reduced to a painfully small dimension to minimise the number of pages, I suppose; and the format is B, the one between mass market paperback and hardcover. And all the Fantasy Masterworks will be in B format: already out is TIME AND THE GODS by Lord Dunsany, an omnibus of six early collections; and in April there's Eddison's THE WORM OUROBOROS and TALES OF THE DYING EARTH by Jack Vance, an omnibus of all four Dying Earth volumes.

I won't argue about taste but I just want to say that I'm not Don Maitz' greatest fan either, his BotNS covers range from good (the two that Orb uses on the omnibuses) to pretty horrible (the other two), but they're all technically well crafted and the good ones are IMO atmospherical and not at all as clichéd as their reputation. The Millennium cover on the other hand is technically inadequate, clichéd, totally lacking in atmosphere and plain ugly. (The guys at Millennium must really have something against Wolfe, the cover of The Fifth Head of Cerberus is also horrible buyond belief.) Bruce Pennington's cover art and the art on the Swedish edition by [Something] Gordon are really good though, and could have been used instead. (But if I could choose, then I'd hire Jeffrey Jones or Frank Frazetta to do the covers, both are truly fabulous artists that would really catch Urth's atmosphere.)

Mm, format B, my favourite. :) I really don't have a problem with reading small print, I even like it of some reason. The Fantasy Masterworks series looks REALLY interesting, (I'd buy the entire series if the BotNS cover hadn't been so ugly, I think I'm going to buy the Orb edition instead :)) all of the books planned for release so far have been on my to-buy list for ages, especially Jack Vance's TALES OF THE DYING EARTH, which is almost as good as Wolfe himself. Also planned for release so far are Little, Big by John Crowley and Robert E. Howard's Conan series collected in two volumes, I've also heard rumors of M. John Harrison's Virconium series. Other titles that I wouldn't mind seeing would be The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson, something by Avram Davidson (perhaps The Phoenix in the Mirror) and Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea. // Jesper Svedberg

The Orb covers are cropped versions of the original Simon and Schuster/Pocket editions by Don Maitz. I have always disliked Maitz's cover for Citadel and regret seeing it return on the Orb Sword and Citadel, but I have always loved his cover for Shadow of the Torturer and am glad to see it used on the Orb Shadow and Claw. Tastes differ. My favorite Wolfe cover is the Gollanz hc edition of Free Live Free. Unfortunately, it's a cover for Tom Disch's On Wings of Song which found its way on to the wrong book.