The King's Deryni

[john]

Amazon now has a cover of 'The King's Deryni'  The shield of the Haldanes beside the shield of Corwyn.
Pax,
John

[DesertRose]

Nice!  Thanks for passing it on. 

[Evie]

Cool! I like the artistic license of adding a bit of gold highlight (or almost backlighting) to Alaric's gryphon to hello the green stand out from the black background. There's a reason for that "no color on color" heraldic rule, but with that slight tweak to the green, the gryphon shape is nicely accentuated without the art being any less true to the canonical description.  While it would have been nice to see a scene from the book on the cover, at least with this design there's really nothing to complain about the artist getting wrong.  German artist for those awful "Kelson the Barbarian" covers, I'm looking at you, dear.... 

[AnnieUK]

I wonder if that's final artwork? I know The Republic of Thieves had different artwork when it was first put on Amazon than when it was actually published. And to me it doesn't fit well with the rest of the series.

[Evie]

I wonder if that's final artwork? I know The Republic of Thieves had different artwork when it was first put on Amazon than when it was actually published. And to me it doesn't fit well with the rest of the series.

They might change it to something that looks more like the other covers in this series.  Though I've noticed some changes in cover style preferences in the years between when ITKS and CM came out and now, so maybe the publisher decided to take a different approach?  It would be nice if there were more of a style resemblance between covers. On the other hand, though, at least with this sort of cover there's no danger of anyone thinking, "Wait, is this scene even in the book? Is this meant to be a picture of that event in Chapter 6?  If so, the artist got it all wrong!  And why does poor Alaric look like a blond Justin Bieber?!". 

On the other hand, while I can see the heraldic cover instantly catching the eye of long-term fans when the book hits the stores (since we'll be the ones to recognize those coats of arms  immediately and know it's a Deryni book), I'm wondering if newcomers to KK's work will think "Nice clean cover design, what does the back blurb say?" or just "Meh. Boring"?