Covers, US vs. UK Edition: “The Six-Gun Tarot” by R.S. Belcher (Tor & Titan)

Spotted the UK cover in Forbidden Planet in London today, and was moved to share it on here. I’ve been aware of R.S. Belcher’s The Six-Gun Tarot since it came out in the US (published by Tor), but it seems to have also been quietly released in the UK, recently, by Titan Books. Here are the two covers…

Out of the two, I definitely prefer the UK cover (on the right). Really cool. If that doesn’t grab your attention, here’s the synopsis:

Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker’s wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone’s business, may know more about the town’s true origins than he’s letting on.

A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation.

I’ll be sure to review it as soon as possible (I already have it).

UK vs. US Covers: James Rollins & Rebecca Cantrell’s “Blood Gospel” & “City of Screams”

James Rollins, author of the Sigma Force scientific thrillers (which I’m rather fond of) has teamed up with Rebecca Cantrell to write a new series of thrillers, this time with a slight Dan Brown-Da Vinci Code slant to it. Only, hopefully much better. As I say, I’m fond of Rollins’s Sigma novels, so I have high hopes that he’ll do as good a job with this new venture. (I have a copy of the book, and it’s inching its way up the ever-growing Mt. TBR.) The series also includes an eShort prequel (of sorts), the artwork for which was recently unveiled. I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of the US and UK artwork for the two, as they are quite different.

US vs. UK Covers

Comparing Covers from across the Pond

Early next year, M.L.N Hanover’s Urban Fantasy series, The Black Sun’s Daughter gets a UK release & new artwork through Orbit Books. “M.L.N Hanover” is one of Dan Abraham’s nom de plumes (alongside James S.A. Corey and his own name, of course). The series will be released over the course of four months, as has become customary for Orbit, and should provide fans of both Abraham and Urban Fantasy with an exciting new series and heroine to follow.

Here’s the UK artwork:

Hm. Very bright and eye-catching colours, which I’m not sure match the Urban Fantasy aesthetic, to be honest. I admit, I haven’t read the novels (I do have book one already, though, from the US), but this puts me in mind of Charlie’s Angels – the woman on the front is reminiscent of Minka Kelly, as well as Rachel Weisz and Nina Dobrev, all at the same time! Is it me, or is there a bit of CSI: Miami about the covers, too? Does Jayné pause dramatically to take off her sunglasses, I wonder…?

For this one, I think it has got to be advantage USA, where the series has an altogether more atmospheric style:

I particularly like the smoky-textures to the artwork (in the first one especially), and the third cover just looks bad-ass. There’s some now-cliche UF tramp-stampage, but I don’t see why that wouldn’t have worked in the UK (see Patricia Briggs’s new covers).

What do you think?

Here’s the synopsis for the first novel, Unclean Spirits:

Jayné Heller thinks of herself as a realist, until she discovers reality isn’t quite what she thought it was. When her uncle Eric is murdered, Jayné travels to Denver to settle his estate, only to learn that it’s all hers — and vaster than she ever imagined. And along with properties across the world and an inexhaustible fortune, Eric left her a legacy of a different kind: his unfinished business with a cabal of wizards known as the Invisible College.

Led by the ruthless Randolph Coin, the Invisible College harnesses demon spirits for their own ends of power and domination. Jayné finds it difficult to believe magic and demons can even exist, let alone be responsible for the death of her uncle. But Coin sees Eric’s heir as a threat to be eliminated by any means — magical or mundane — so Jayné had better start believing in something to save her own life.

Aided in her mission by a group of unlikely companions — Aubrey, Eric’s devastatingly attractive assistant; Ex, a former Jesuit with a lethal agenda; Midian, a two-hundred-year-old man who claims to be under a curse from Randolph Coin himself; and Chogyi Jake, a self-styled Buddhist with mystical abilities — Jayné finds that her new reality is not only unexpected, but often unexplainable. And if she hopes to survive, she’ll have to learn the new rules fast — or break them completely….