Timewaster's Guide Archive

This is just laughably bad. It looks as though Sweet was heavily inebriated when he painted this, because he's capable of such greater work. Either he was drunk, or he didn't give two shits about how it looked. It seems like he couldn't decide how to make Rand's arm look without the hand so he hid it in the folds of the coat sleeve. Sweet's depiction of Rand isn't even consistent with the other covers, what with the incredibly buff Rand in aCoS, or the kingly Joaquin Pheonix-esque Rand of tPoD, or the cheesy romance-novel Rand on Lord of Chaos. I think he should take an art class to learn what proportion is.

Sweet must be on a binding contract, because everyone at Tor would have to be on crack for them to approve this cover art otherwise. There's no reason why a volume of a best-selling book series should be presented this shoddily. That being said, while I was initially really displeased, I'm sure eventually I'll come to love the cover art in its inexplicably cheap glory.