Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reign
Cover art by Todd Lockwood. Now, here's Publishers Weekly on the interior:
"British literary agent Lloyd begins this dense and involved sword and sorcery debut by introducing Isak, a penniless young man with no fixed home who serves as a slave to his resentful, unhappy father. Worse, Isak is a white-eye, born with distinctive eyes, a large frame, unusual strength and an exceedingly quick temper. Isak’s world changes in an instant when Aracnan, an immortal sorcerer, tries to offer Isak a mysterious scroll. Within a day, Isak has become heir to Lord Bahl of Farlan, and he learns that he is a nascent mage and the focus of a thousand-year-old prophecy. Whether Isak is willing or able to fulfill that prophecy is just the beginning of this tale. Lloyd pours enough testosterone into his high fantasy to power past a few inconsistencies, creating a fine start to a reported five-book series."
2 comments:
Just started this yesterday and I find it quite good. A few awkward phrasings, but a story that I am steadily growing excited about.
It's interesting how I chose this book: I first picked this book off the shelf because of the awesome cover. While that often intiates my interest in a book, it rarely sells me the book. However, flipping it over revealed the Pyr imprint and I realized that this was exactly what James Enge's Blood of Ambrose was going to be like next year. So I began studying the book (as a small press publisher). Read the top half of the back, then the interior blurbs. None of these components by themselves was enough to sell me - together, I decided to buy it. Honestly, though, my strongest motivation was to use it as comparison for the titles I produce and James' book next year.
Later, at home, I finally read the last half of the back cover, including the blurbs. Needless to say, the best was literally the last: the final half of Interzone's statement [He] echoes writers such as Moorcock and Gemmell. was the clincher. Of course, I will be looking for this comparison to Gemmell, one of my favorites, but it sold me completely.
Goes to show that every aspect of a cover is integral to sales.
Hey, I really appreciate this blow-by-blow-buying-breakdown, thank you very much. I'll say that the Moorcock comparisons become more obvious to me the deeper into the series I get, and that I think Steven Erikson is a fair comparison too (though I've only read a little Erikson). I'd say the Enge probably compares more to Fritz Leiber's half of S&S, and to contemporary authors Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch. Both Lloyd and Enge are fantastic writers, and I'll be interested to see how you compare/contrast them if you read Blood of Ambrose in April.
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