My latest cover for Angry Robot Books was unveiled this week on the Barnes & Noble blog. The Resurrectionist of Caligo is an atmospheric Gothic fantasy for which the cover art veers close to the illustration work I was doing recently for Editorial Alma, Frankenstein in particular:
With a murderer on the loose, it’s up to an enlightened bodysnatcher and a rebellious princess to save the city, in this wonderfully inventive Victorian-tinged fantasy noir.
“Man of Science” Roger Weathersby scrapes out a risky living digging up corpses for medical schools. When he’s framed for the murder of one of his cadavers, he’s forced to trust in the superstitions he’s always rejected: his former friend, princess Sibylla, offers to commute Roger’s execution in a blood magic ritual which will bind him to her forever. With little choice, he finds himself indentured to Sibylla and propelled into an investigation. There’s a murderer loose in the city of Caligo, and the duo must navigate science and sorcery, palace intrigue and dank boneyards to catch the butcher before the killings tear their whole country apart.
Some covers present more difficulties than others, this one being an awkward layout in its early stages due to the multiple demands of the brief. Not only was the book title a lengthy one, there were also two author names to accommodate plus a variety of pictorial detail that required placing in a harmonious arrangement. I don’t always begin a design with the title layout but in this case this was the first priority, so the cover is designed around the title rather than the title being applied to the cover at a later stage. All of this caused me some headaches for a few days while I tried to find a type layout that would look pleasing, be readable from a distance and also not interfere too much with the background. None of the struggle is evident in the final work, of course, which is as things should be.
The Resurrectionist of Caligo will be published in September.
