Apr 27, 2013

Cover Art for Vance Novels

cover art by Jasper Schreurs
This blog is full of descriptions of how the science fiction of Jack Vance has influenced me. The first novel by Vance that I ever read was Trullion. Vance's novels are now being sold at the Vance website where they are presented with new cover art. Nice high resolution images of the new cover art are available.

Most of the story for Trullion takes place in the Fens, a river delta with hundreds of channels and islands. The main character, Glinnes Hulden, grew up at his family home on Rabendary Island. Travel is accomplished by boat rather than along roads.

One night the fiery Duissane arrives at the dock in front of the house that Glinnes inherited from his now dead father. Believing that Glinnes has stollen a fortune of 30,000,000 million ozols, Duissane seduces Glinnes and suggests that they leave Trullion and go off to live in luxury on some distant world.

Visit the deviantART pages of Jasper Schreurs
At this point in the story, Glinnes has not yet gotten his hands on the money. Duissane, now regretting her mistake, runs down the dock and jumps into her boat. She falls over board and is soon struggling for her life. The water ways of Trullion are the home of Merlings, humanoid creatures who are constantly at war with humans. In fact, both the father and sister of Glinnes were captured and eaten by Merlings.
image source

image source
A short distance from Rabendary Island is the home of the Mentor, Akadie. Rising above Clinkhammer Broad are the towers of Arkadie's house.

This is where Glinnes first meets the Connatic, absolute ruler of Alastor Clustor. The Connatic is under cover on Trullion, disguised as the "wandering journalist" Ryl Shermatz.

The cover art by Jasper Schreurs does an excellent job of evoking the Fens and the setting of Trullion.

The Book of Dreams
cover art by David Russell
I previously tried my hand at making an illustration depicting the home of Dwyddion, the head of the Institute in Vance's novel The Book of Dreams.

The evil-doing Howard Alan Treesong has killed all the other leaders of the Institute. Kirth Gersen arrives at Dwyddion's house just in the nick of time and saves Dwyddion from the murderous Treesong.

Vance described Dwyddion's house at Airy Gulch as, "hunched to the attack of a thousand furious lightening bolts, reverberating to wind and thunder."

Related Reading:
Assignment: Marune.

Fanfiction Disease: ideas for a sequel to The Book of Dreams.

I showed another new cover for a Vance novel in my previous blog post.

More by Jasper Schreurs
I agree. It is not fair to only show one example of cover art by Jasper Schreurs. Below is part of another cover illustration; the full cover is here along with some biographical information about Jasper.

image source

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