This is a blog with spoiler free reviews. Most will be Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, but there will be some books in other genres, including the occasional Non-Fiction review. There is an ongoing series of Cover Reveal Round-Ups, and sometimes I'll write an article on something that interests me.

04 April, 2012

NORWEGIAN A GAME OF THRONES BOOK COVERS

   Norway isn't exactly the prime location for translated SFF. Apart from the mega sellers not much has actually been translated since the internet became common about ten years ago and everyone started ordering the books in English online.

   So it was not until last year that we got the first translation of George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, done by the new publisher Vendetta Forlag ("Forlag" being the Norwegian word for Publisher/Press).
   As is usual in Norway, A Game of Thrones was split in two for the translation. And a competition was held to find the covers for the two books. Below you can see the two winners, but I urge you to look at the Is og Ild (Ice and Fire) blog, here, there you can see the third place entry, a rather nice illustration of Jon Snow (, and get the covers in much higher resolution if you click on their images).

I VARGENS TID
(Translates as: In the Age of the Wolf)
Cover art: Janne Magnussen

KAMPEN OM JERNTRONEN
(Translates as: The Battle for the Iron Throne)
Cover art: Even Bøthun

   (These are the covers for the Hardcover editions, the Paperbacks have gotten photo covers from the TV series. You can see them here and here.)
   I really like the Norwegian covers. When we last had translations of some of the big SFF series in the 1990s they decided to use the US covers, and I think what Vendetta has done here is great. 
   What do you think of the two Norwegian A Game of Thrones covers?

4 comments:

  1. These are very nice covers indeed. I especially like Janne Magnussen's one. A little too bad that the lettering takes away some details if the viewer isn't patient to look closely, but the art piece is very good.
    You are lucky though. The Romanian editions have some bad covers. Although I think they are attempting to publish a box set of their hardback editions that has the wonderful work of Marc Simonetti on the box faces.

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    1. It's not often we get these kind of covers in Norway. Usually it's just the US one, or some minimalist barely related thing. But these are really good.

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  2. I wish we had those covers in Australia. Time to learn to read Norwegian. :)

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    1. You know where to find me if you need help with those Norwegian lessons ;-)

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