... Book by Its Cover, part two

Oh, yeah, here's another of my favorite covers, for The 97th Step. It's a full-wrap montage by Royo, and I really liked it when it came out.

A few thing about the illustration:

There isn't a guy who looks like Mel Gibson with a bandage on his hand in the book; nor, is there a girl in a jumpsuit doing a martial arts' pose.

Nary a dogfight in space between two ships.

No semi-nude dancer waving a big pink bedsheet about.

Not a burning city anywhere.

There are planets and moons and like that, but that's it.

Even so, it's a great cover. Why? Because anybody capable of reading the novel will surely get that it is a science fiction book -- if they didn't figure that out by where it was shelved -- and maybe that it is interesting enough to open it.

If I don't snag you with the first line -- "The slaver was about to buy trouble, only he didn't know it yet." so you want to read the next graph, and then after that, to turn the page, and keep reading the scene to find out what happens to the slaver, then you can't blame the cover artist, that's on me.

And if I can't keep you reading to the end, to the point where you don't think about the cover again and realize none of it is in the book? my fault, too ...