2009 Fall Book Preview With Covers

[Karnbeln]

Unworthy- I liked the simple shot of Voyager in space for Full Circle. It really projected the tone of the book, feeling contemplative, hopeful, sad, majestic, and simple all at once. This time around, it feels uninspired, though. The Voyager render also doesn't hide that it's CGI all to well. I wonder what happened to the design-in-progress with Seven and Chakotay on the front.

Enterprise- It's not as awful as all the posters on TrekMovie are saying (not that anything seems to please that crowd), just... plain. It says "Enterprise", but not "Romulan War". I like T'Pol finally in uniform, though.

Titan- Um... when did Jonathan Frakes start posing for the covers of romance novels? The flying open collar of the undershirt is a little extreme. Minuet seems awkward, too. Not bad besides that, though. It would be plain, but it's not an event novel like the previous two.

Vangaurd- Awesome shot, but ever since his blog opened I've been a Drexler fanboy, so that opinion is expected.

I'm looking forward to these books, although I need to catch up on Titan and Vangaurd before I get to them.

[J47]

I didn't mind the shot of Voyager on the Full Circle cover, but to repeat the idea on the next book feels uninspired. This is made worse by the feeling that the artwork is unfinished and could use some polishing.

My issue with these is that, with the notable exception of The Never-Ending Sacrifice, the covers for the upcoming novels feel like a return to the era of a lack of inspiration for Trek covers dominated by floating heads in space. Granted the Titan and Vanguard covers stay true to established motifs (and are well executed, just like their predecessors), but does this mean that from here on out we'll be seeing uninspired ship shots for Voyager's relaunch? The cover for The Romulan War does not, in any way, convey a 'war' to me, not even a cold war; instead it makes me think we're going to be getting a lot of cerebral diplomatic conversations. The Sorrows of Empire's cover is bland, bland, bland - are we on Vulcan? And the cover for The Soul Key just looks cheap.

I guess this just goes to show how spoiled we've been over the last couple of years when it came to gorgeous artwork for our Trek covers.

[Cap'n Crunch]

The cover for Unworthy is the same image from this month of the 2009 Ships of the Line Calendar. So it's not an original image, but in my opinion it does look better on the book than in the calendar.

[historypeats]

J47 wrote:

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I didn't mind the shot of Voyager on the Full Circle cover, but to repeat the idea on the next book feels uninspired. This is made worse by the feeling that the artwork is unfinished and could use some polishing.

My issue with these is that, with the notable exception of The Never-Ending Sacrifice, the covers for the upcoming novels feel like a return to the era of a lack of inspiration for Trek covers dominated by floating heads in space. Granted the Titan and Vanguard covers stay true to established motifs (and are well executed, just like their predecessors), but does this mean that from here on out we'll be seeing uninspired ship shots for Voyager's relaunch? The cover for The Romulan War does not, in any way, convey a 'war' to me, not even a cold war; instead it makes me think we're going to be getting a lot of cerebral diplomatic conversations. The Sorrows of Empire's cover is bland, bland, bland - are we on Vulcan? And the cover for The Soul Key just looks cheap.

I guess this just goes to show how spoiled we've been over the last couple of years when it came to gorgeous artwork for our Trek covers.

My feelings exactly. "Floating heads again...dammit" was the first thing that came to mind.

And as for Margaret's comment about what amount to "Trek-lite" covers...look, I understand to a certain extent where she's coming from. I feel less awkward about reading Trek books on the Kindle in public than if I'm holding a paperback.

But here's the thing: that attitude's left over from being friends with a whole bunch of people who couldn't give a damn about Trek.

That's also left over from a time before a new Star Trek film could pull in $250 million domestically.

I can't imagine that shame over being seen with a Trek novel in public has any appreciable impact on Pocket's bottom line.

And if it does, that still doesn't excuse these lazy designs. As someone else alluded to earlier, "Star Trek" is still on the cover; people are still wearing Starfleet uniforms on them. Those designs are plenty recognizable. They're just amateurish. Frankly, I'd be more embarrassed to be seen in public reading something with The Soul Key's cover than with The Never Ending Sacrifice's art. Even if you do have to go the floating-heads route, Titan's done a great job with theirs - Orion's Hounds color scheme works particularly well.

I'm still excited to read these, but there's no valid reason that I shouldn't demand what amounts to a nice garnish with the main course.

[Man of Steel]

If you have a book about a war, then why would u put a picture of a crew on the cover instead of something resembling a war?

[Rat Boy]

You can almost see the bruise on Riker from where Troi slapped him silly.

[Deranged Nasat]

Man of Steel wrote:

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If you have a book about a war, then why would u put a picture of a crew on the cover instead of something resembling a war?

Well, my guess: It shows us Archer, representing Earth, and his extraterrestrial allies, making a stand- united- against the Romulan's xenophobia-driven war machine?

[BrotherBenny]

I have no job, but I'm looking, and I need to shell out loads of moolah for all these books and more besides...Grrrr

[JD]

All of the books sound great, but I do have to agree about the Romulan War and Unworthy covers. IMO they're both boring and rather poor quality. Especially The Romulan War, IMO the picture is just weird looking. My only complaint about Unworthy is that it's another shot of Voyager, which we already got for FC. As for the others, I actually don't mind them so much, except I don't care for the way Riker's vest uniform looks with the shirt open like that. I do love the Precipice cover though, it's just as awsome as the other Vanguard ones, and I'm rather indifferent to Sorrows. It's not horrible in anyway, but there's nothing particularly awsome about it.

Now as for the descriptions, those I love. I think this is probably the most excited I've been for an entire group of Trek books in a while.

[Marie1]

I'm curious about Precipice since I'm reading Summon the Thunder at the moment, after reading what the linked site said about it... it's like..."what happened...?"

*puzzled*

Soon I'll get to find out!

[shanejayell]

About David Mack's "The Sorrows of Empire" wasn't that already out in the Mirror Universe omnibus?

[Ktrek]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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Margaret described her cover philosophy at Shore Leave last year thusly: For her books, she wants covers that don't obviously look like Star Trek covers, that someone can read on the New York subway and not be embarassed by.

If that is true then she needs to re-think what is embarrasing. I think all but the Vangaurd book would be embarrasing for me to carry on the subway! In fact the word ashamed comes to mind.

Kevin

[Brendan Moody]

shanejayell wrote:

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About David Mack's "The Sorrows of Empire" wasn't that already out in the Mirror Universe omnibus?

This is a full-novel-length expanded version of that story.

[Hartzilla2007]

Brendan Moody wrote:

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This is a full-novel-length expanded version of that story.

Is it expanded enough to buy it if you already own Glass Empires?

[David Mack]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Is it expanded enough to buy it if you already own Glass Empires?

It will be more than double the length of the original.