The cover for the US version of The Gathering Storm, book twelve of The Wheel of Time, has been unveiled by Tor Books on Dragonmount. The cover is done by Darryl K. Sweet, who has done all the previous US covers for the series.
As previously announced by Tor Books, the last book in the series – A Memory of Light – will be divided into three parts, the first one being The Gathering Storm. They will be written by Brandon Sanderson after Robert Jordan passed away in 2007.
The cover obviously display Rand al’Thor, with some other less obvious woman, at some place, being angry at something (a gathering storm?). I have personally never liked the style of the US covers, a reason why all Wheel of Time books in my bookcase have black covers, but from the comments on Dragonmount it looks like I’m not the only one with a different taste.
Dragonmount revealed the UK cover a time ago, and I have to say it look much better, despite having a lack of motif except a storm.
That cover is really terrible. I hate the cover art as well. It’s always impossible to identify the characters on the cover, with the exception of Rand. I’m never very impressed with fantasy cover art, though.
Has Brandon Sanderson been the writer all along? I seem to recall someone else getting tapped to write the final book(s). But I’m drawing a complete blank as to who it was. But it was someone I’d heard of.
Google is giving up no answers, so perhaps I dreamt it.
Anyway, these covers always seem very juvenile to me. Not at all appealing.
Nope, Brandon was who they picked. Maybe they wanted someone else first, but we would never know.
None of the cover art has really been that good (I have not seen the covers outside the US though).
On a side note, it has been sooooo long since I have read the series, I can’t remember what was going on, and the prospect of going back and rereading a billion pages is not high on my list of things to do…need some spark notes or something! :o)
If you want you can cheat and just read the summary of every chapter ;) http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=13372
Thanks for the suggestion it is a very interesting, and time saving, read indeed!