Eight Million Gods - upcoming Baen book

Link to the eARC sample chapters

I will have to reserve judgment for when this actually gets released in June, but I'm really enjoying the sample chapters. It's an interesting meta-treatment of writing, blurring the line between the creator and the created. And hey, the sample chapters are free!

Most Baen books are only worth checking out to see how hilariously terrible the cover art is. This one definitely doesn't disappoint!

Eh. Not working on my Android-powered tablet.

It wouldn't be a Baen book without a Contemptible Cover. They employ huge teams of artists to ensure that that sad thing never happens.

Eh, they're not all bad, and even the ones that look sketchy usually make sense in the context of the story (which is very much YMMV territory, of course). Personally, I never regret the time I spend going to Baen's "traveling road show" panels at SF conventions, where they show off new cover images and go into a brief explanation of what's depicted as it relates to the story within.

That said, I think some of you might want to look at what Contemptible Cover actually says, as you seem to be using it for "cover I don't like".

edited 26th Feb '13 9:00:47 PM by Nohbody

Not me. I have read every one of Lois Mc Master Bujold's Vorkiverse books, and just about all the 1632 verse mainline books, and all three Ring of Fire books, and all but one of them has the Contemptible Cover problem. (a further one has the cover actually invoked in-universe) For details, see the entry for that trope on this very wiki.

That entry (and at a glance, the entire page) is in need of some clean up, actually, but I've got plenty of other stuff to call on my time.

From the trope description: "The kind of cover that contains an excess of sexual, violent or otherwise lurid imagery, often at odds with the book's actual content." (emphasis mine)

Ring? A few of the Gazette ones are borderline lurid, with In-Universe justification (Anne whatsherface posing for... crap, forget his name, but the OTL famous artist that was at the siege of Amsterdam in 1633 and follow-ups), but strike out on excesses of sexual and violent imagery.

Vorkosigan? Some violence, but hardly excessive, particularly given that the series has Military Science Fiction elements. The other two qualifiers aren't even present, let alone present in excess.

(For the record: Baen catalog, listed by series. Kind of out of date, even allowing for ebook-only releases (like later Grantville Gazettes), but allows quick looks at covers, by mousing over the relevant title.)

edited 26th Feb '13 9:36:32 PM by Nohbody

You wrote: "...otherwise lurid imagery"

Dictionary.com says: "lu·rid Adjective 1.Very vivid in color, esp. so as to create an unpleasantly harsh or unnatural effect: 'lurid food colorings'."

Plenty of Baen covers look like that to me. The 'Honor Harrington' ones, for a start. Putting the author's name up there in metallic gold with bright yellow explosions, silvery spaceships and a big floating heid could well be described as "unpleasantly harsh. :)

Agreed that the cover kind of fits Contemptible Cover what with the short-skirted anime chicks striking down wolves with katana in mid-leap. *shrug* Anyone have any commentary on the content of the provided chapters?

I'm highly tempted to buy this one when it comes out. The main character is nicely neurotic with her problem with needing to write constantly, and I like the world they're building.

^^ Sure, if you want to stretch "unpleasantly harsh" out of shape to satisfy a personal dislike.

My eyesight was bad enough before I had a browse of the images around the Honorverse on Google Images Search.

My gosh and golly, I agree with the poster who said the colours were unduly harsh.

It's not a "stretch" at all, unless you can come up with some sort of formula to explain obectively whether something is "harsh" or not.

Finished it, read it on mobi.

Its very good book, fun and fast-paced story.

I created a somewhat barebones trope page, Eight Million Gods. I'll try to do some cross-wicking tonight.

On a side not, Wen Spencer really needs a decent copyeditor... or maybe Baen does. Multiple misspellings and missing punctuation marks. I'd say that a spellchecker could have caught them all, but perhaps the mixing of Japanese and English messed things up.