Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Raven Arrive on American Shores!

Just saw that James Barclay's Dawnthief,the first book in his Chronicles of the Raven trilogy, is up at Amazon. Should be in physical stores very soon now. Here's a shot of the full cover. The swords are by Sam Hadley, the design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht (and isn't that stark white title font effective?) and there's a story behind the rocky background. Really, really, really happy with the way this one turned out. My copies should arrive today, and I'm so excited to see them.

10 comments:

Jeff C said...

I just got my finished review copy today from UPS. It looks great!

Steve the Bookstore Guy said...

We just posted a review of this over at our blog! It was a fantastic read, and like you said, Lou, the layout on it looks outstanding! It may seem a simple thing, but I really like the spine-design. Like the design on Age of Misrule, it really makes the most of its limited area, and will grab people's attention if the bookstores put it spine out.

My only regret is that is took 10 years for us to get these novels. But hey, better late than never.

http://elitistbookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/08/dawnthief.html

ces said...

That is a stunning cover!

Nice and simple, but very effective. And I agree about the font.

Time to go to Amazon.

Had lunch with hubby yesterday. When he commented that my purse (a tote bag) was heavy, I said, "Well it should be - it's got 6 books in it!" He shook his head & said, "You went to the book store." Of course I did - how could I go downtown & NOT go to the book store!

Lou Anders said...

Steve, thanks for the review. Appreciated. James said you'd been in touch with him too.

Ces, what can I say?

ces said...

I just thought his comment was funny - it made me laugh.

Anyways, UPS just dropped Dawnthief on my doorstop. It'll make good reading while I'm at the dentist tomorrow!

Lou Anders said...

How do you think the physical book looks now you've seen it?

ces said...

The physical book looks beautiful!

The cover is nice & sturdy. The white type with its barely discernible shadowing really looks sharp, the typeface used looks like it was etched into the rock background.

The map inside is actually useful - it was moved away from the spine/centre, so the printing isn't swallowed up - there's a nice border there of blank space. The cast list, instead of listing every entity in the book, is limited to the main ones. And the chapter headings are nice and simple.

The only complaint I would have is the text font is small, which makes it harder to read at my age than 20 years ago. But there's lots of leading, which makes it easier to read.

A book to be proud of definitely!

Lou Anders said...

You don't mind that the two halves of the map don't run to the margin then?

(And thank you for such a detailed breakdown of your response.)

ces said...

No, I don't mind at all!

I can scan the 2 pages and then "glue" them together into one page and have it in front of me to look at while reading the book!

One thing I forgot to mention. The front cover spine is very well done! It follows the same format as the Misrule books, and will be easy to spot on the bookshelf - the white type will definitely stand out, and the number being vertical instead of horizontal will also make it easy to identify which book in the series it is.

Lou Anders said...

We're going to do that with more series books, particularly when we do three in three months like this.