From: Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>
Subject: Re: (urth) Bruce Pennington covers
Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 11:58:39 +0200

Tony Ellis wrote:
> The artist is Bruce Pennington, and for my money his covers 
> evoke the romance, the mystery, the great age and the ruinous
> beauty of Severian's world like nothing else. The covers for 
> Claw and Shadow are the most outstanding, but they all convey -
> through tone and colour as much as through what is depicted -
> exactly what the reader is in for.

I have to agree with this.  The cover for Shadow, showing a mysterious
figure (Severian) below a cluttered hill, has haunted me ever since
I first bought it.  There's a sense of age and decay, mixed with a
half familiarity of seeing our own past; the figure, totally enfolded
in his cloak, is at once a focus and slightly apart from the world.
It's full of all the right sorts of ambiguity.

By the way, I noticed that the cover of Claw in the Italian translation
was the one from this series.  I wonder how far they've spread.

pws

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