Sunday 16 April 2017

The Czech covers for China Mieville's novels are awesome

Behold below the Czech cover art for the novels (and one short story collection) of China Mieville:


On the top row, from left, that's King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council and Looking for Jake. On the bottom row, from left, there's Un Lun Dun, The City and The City, KrakenEmbassytown and Railsea.

You may recognise the cover art for Perdido Street Station and The Scar from the original UK editions from Pan Macmillan. The artwork is all by Edward Miller (a pseudonym for artist Les Edwards), also known for his work for PS Publishing (including on the Malazan limited editions and on Scott Lynch's books). After The Scar came out the UK publishers decided to switch to a more generic and standard art style before switching again for the dark, moody covers they are still using today. Although these are okay, the surreal and bizarre imagery from Miller was very appropriate for Mieville's work and it was a shame to see him go.

The Czech publishers clearly agreed, as they retained Miller to keep working on the cover art for their editions of the novels. I couldn't find any information on a Czech edition of Three Moments of an Explosion, This Census-Taker or The Last Days of New Paris, so it's unknown if they will continue to use Miller for their works.

Thanks to Outthere Books for spotting this intriguing development.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Three Moments of an Explosion - cover by David G. Stevenson
http://www.laser-books.cz/edicni-plan/

JoshC said...

It's nice to see some decent covers for a change. So many novels these days have tediously unimaginative or generic covers. I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but you still have to do something to attract our attention.