Novel Notions

Greetings, everyone! Adam here, and I’m thrilled to announce Novel Notions’ participation in the cover reveal for Rob Hayes’ hardback edition of THE LESSONS NEVER LEARNED, book two of The War Eternal series. Let me turn it over to Rob to discuss the backstory of how these stunning hardback editions came to be.

Here we go with something a bit fancy. To mark the 2nd anniversary of The War Eternal (I still can’t quite believe it’s been 2 years already), I decided I wanted to give Eska some nice hardbacks. I don’t know about anyone else, but I love collecting hardbacks. There’s something a bit different to owning a book that solid. But I didn’t just want to use the old artwork. I wanted to make these books a bit special. So I commissioned Felix Ortiz and Shawn King to bring whole new art to the books and to splash some new colour on the series.

If you’ll indulge me a short story, it all started with this image.

This was the original concept for Along the Razor’s Edge Felix produced so long ago now. I loved it. I loved it so damned much. But in the end we decided to go with something a bit more traditional for the covers. But I’ve never stopped loving that original version. So when I approached Felix with the idea for the new hardbacks, I told him I wanted them done in that style. He took it as a challenge.

For the new THE LESSONS NEVER LEARNED cover, I told Felix I wanted three major components. The first was Eska looking a bit older and wearing some badass armour and wielding a couple of swords. The second was Ssserakis (the demon) looking no less scary, but more of an ally than an enemy. And the third was lightning because book 2 would not be complete without lightning! We played around with a few different colour schemes, and in the end settled on blues and greens. So I present to you all, the jacket cover for the The Lessons Never Learned hardback.

But that’s not all. The case of the hardback is also printed with the naked artwork and the book’s tagline on the back done in the same bespoke font that Shawn created for the titles. I’ve also completely reformatted the interior for as professional a book as I can make.

The hardbacks are available now from Amazon and probably some other online retailers.

And I sell signed copies direct from my website. But please be aware international postage is currently a bit ridiculous.

And, of course, I have to remind you all here that The War Eternal series is continuing this year. SINS OF THE MOTHER (book 4) is releasing on May 3rd. And DEATH’S BEATING HEART (book 5) is coming in December.

Check out our advance review of SINS OF THE MOTHER. You can also find the cover reveal for ALONG THE RAZOR’S EDGE from our friends over at FantasyBookCritic, and the cover reveal for FROM COLD ASHES RISEN at FanFiAddict here.