LateNightHacking Louis Journal

Auth

I just finished Stealing The Elf-King's Roses by Diane Duane. Very good! It's set in a similar universe to the Young Wizards series. Ambits and universe sheafs and ethical constants as physical as gravitational constants. And a fantastic, world-saving finale. Yeah, a guilty pleasure. <satisfied grin>

My biggest complaint is the cover. It looks like a romance novel! It sure as heck is not! If you were expecting romance, you would be deeply disappointed. It's a detective / sci-fi / fantasy story. Sure, you can't judge a book by its cover but the cover should at least get the genre right! I almost didn't buy the book! (Luckily, I read the blurb on the back cover too.) I mean, look at The Wizards's Dilema - there's a cover that does not suggest romance. Instead, the cover to Stealing is all pink with lots of roses and swirly letters and a woman with a red gown and too much makeup or something. Now, having read the book I can see where most of the cover elements come from, but it's all out of relative importance. Sunset on stark mountains, a sci-fi city, a judge's black robe, special chain around her neck. But the roses that dominate the cover are mostly metaphorical and only show up in the book at the very end. Bah! Where's the other main characters? The big white wolfhound? Secret service agents? Murder victims? People disapearing though world gates? Wouldn't that be more descriptive of the actual story?!

Oh well, it was still a good book. :)