Winter is Coming in a Moderately-Priced Package

I allow myself few nerdrages.

The reasons are myriad: I don’t feel I’d have much to add to the “raving wildly at the camera and/or blog” reviews-as-performance-art that are so in chic, I don’t think it’s entirely becoming to channel your geekish enthusiasm into a frothing, spittle-laden fury, but chiefly, I don’t think pedantry is a particularly useful form of criticism.  And I don’t think I’ve ever seen nerdrage that didn’t revolve around pedantry.

I rarely weigh in on the subject of cover art of books for the same reason: it rarely tends to be constructive and more often devolves into a furious flaunting of pedantry.  At least, as far as genre book covers go.

In case you hadn’t figured it out, this blog post is going to be super pedantic.

The internet is absolutely choked with complaints about how genre book covers are “embarrassing,” “juvenile,” “adolescent” or any number of adjectives that adequately sum up the statement “I’m an ardent fan of fantasy, just so long as no one knows it.”  My own covers have not been immune to this criticism.  How could they not?  They feature a guy with a big-ass sword.

Except this one, which features a gal with a big-ass sword.  And a bunch of purple-skinned monsters.  And a giant dragonman.

That’s the French cover to The Skybound Sea by Marc Simonetti and I still think it’s badass.  But that’s besides the point.

Proclamations like this don’t really bother me.  I’m 6’4″, have an amazing jawline and do what I love for a living.  You couldn’t possibly make me feel bad for doing something I enjoy.  Thus, I don’t really get emotionally invested in cover art.  I enjoy what I enjoy and I don’t presume to tell others what they should or should not like.

I’m certainly not doing that now, even though I’m going to make a statement here.

Harper Voyager UK (who I’m sure is staffed with very lovely people who put out fine quality books, many of which are done by people I respect and admire), has just released a recover for George R.R. Martin’s obscure, little-known fantasy series you probably haven’t heard of, A Song of Ice and Fire.

And, well…

 

…yeah.

My first impression is that they look very much like they were designed to appeal to a very mainstream crowd.  My second impression is that they look a little like travel guides.  My third impression is that they look a little like they might actually be a bit like a very safe romantic novel.

But my overall impression is that they don’t look a lot like fantasy novels.

Which is the part that kind of galls me.

I was extremely reluctant to make this blog post, partly because I’m not fond of speaking out against publishers (though I think this hardly counts as that), but mostly because I’m still coming to terms with my inner and outer geek.  And I’m still very much not comfortable with getting into the aforementioned pedantry and yet-to-be-mentioned tribalism that goes hand-in-hand with a nerdrage.

But damn it, Mainstream World, these books were ours first.

I’m not about to go calling George R.R. Martin a fake geek (no one would believe me) or launch into a tirade about how Harper Voyager UK has betrayed geeks as though we were all some gang from The Warriors that you either swore allegiance to or waged war against.  It’s just…I kind of hoped this would go differently.

When Game of Thrones came out on HBO, I was pretty happy.  My friends, who were not geeks, had always been reluctant to get into the same kind of stuff I enjoyed.  But watching the show was a lot like polishing the jewel in the crown of nerdery for them.  It made them enthusiastic and I thought that’d carry across the world.  I thought we’d all be like “see, guys?  Fantasy isn’t for weirdos.  Or it is, but you can be weird and still be cool!  It’s cool to be enthusiastic about this!  It’s cool to enjoy this!  We have loads more stuff like this over here!  Come check it out!”

I’ve always said we in genre should not give as much of a shit what mainstream literature thinks of us.  I not only stand by that, I hold up Game of Thrones as proof.  This was for us.  It was a great story that happened to be fantasy.  It was written well, it was awesome, it was compelling and it was just something we enjoyed without having to prove to anyone else about it.  It was fantasy that could attract people who were not typically into fantasy and who might find that they maybe liked it.

These covers just seem like they’re trying to erase the notion that these books might be fantasy novels.  They’re like turning the fantasy switch low so as not to spook people, rather than flying their flag high and letting people come enjoy it.

I get why Harper Voyager did it.  They’re clearly not hurting for sales and they’re trying to corner the market that’s still avoiding the books based on them being fantasy novels in general.  That’s fine.  Game of Thrones’ word of mouth power is so huge that it could change its covers to an image of George R.R. Martin strangling a man with one hand and beating him with a trout with the words “THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR FINNISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS” and it’d still sell like mad.

And I’m not trying to paint this as a conflict of the beleaguered geek elite beset by impure outsiders.  I think it’s awesome when people read fantasy and enjoy it for the same reason I’m thrilled when a fellow fantasy author does well: there’s no such thing as a reader that reads only one book and it’s tremendous when reading one scratches an itch that someone never knew they had.

I just kind of hoped that it would be non-fantasy fans realizing that fantasy was cool and you could accept it as it was, rather than…well, this.

But I don’t know.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I’m totally overreacting and these are great covers and, despite my best efforts, this is just another pointless nerdrage.  You tell me.

But all in all, I think I’m just a little bummed and felt like moping in public.