More gorgeous cover art

OK, so there’s been a “healthy debate” recently about the featuring (or the avoidance of featuring) characters from non-white cultures on fantasy and SF books. For us, well, perhaps we’re being a tad naive but it never occurred to us. Zinzi, the “girl who finds things” in Lauren Beukes’ very urban fantasy Zoo City, is a black South African, so of course that’s what she looks like on John Picacio’s cover.

And King, the hero of Maurice Broaddus’ superb resetting of the King Arthur mythos among the drug gangs of an American inner city, well, how else could you possibly portray him? If this was a movie – and these incredible books damn well should be! – we wouldn’t blink at a movie poster showing Denzel or Will in the role of our hero. So anyway, here’s the cover art for book two, King’s Justice, which ain’t even out for months and months. Artist once again is the superb Steve Stone. Damn, he’s good.

And here’s our Maurice on his own reaction to the process of depicting his characters in these illustrations.

[As usual, click for a bigger version.]