Sometimes these things come to me in the strangest ways. Apparently, The Way of Shadows was just released in Russia by EKSMO Publishing. Someone in the comments dropped me the link, and sure enough, this has got to be my book: blue glowy sword, crumpled guard, broken window. This is a good example of what’s known as a ‘narrative cover’. The art tells a story. It’s a concept of what a cover should do that you don’t see as often in America or the UK anymore. (Blame short attention spans or evolving market demand or a simple quest for novelty.) But it can be a lot of fun to pick out things from the book and see how the artist has worked those together. It’s also proof that the artist read the book–which is definitely not guaranteed. I’ve seen hugely successful books by great authors that got totally random covers overseas–just because maybe the editor had rights to some piece of art that he liked. So… it’s a big world, strange things happen. So my thanks to my Russian editors and the translator, who contacted me many times (something I love!) to get things just right.

The Russian language version isn’t a huge launch, but if you see it and speak Russian, please let me know what you think!