Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover...?

  When one picks up a novel the very first thing that is noticed is the cover. Title, font and design are the very things that make you pick it up, that (dare I say it) ‘draw you in’. Covers are important no matter what genre you’re searching for; whether romance with a lovers embrace, science fiction with a huge robot or gothic with a dark figure in the corner. Covers define the novel and give insight into plot.

  

  I cannot stand it, therefore, when a cover gets revamped because the story has been used in television or film. I don’t want my Game of Thrones to have Sean Bean on it; nor my Woman in Black to have Daniel Radcliffe. I like the original designs that the author originally decided upon.  Having Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant on my Hamlet doesn’t make me want to buy it any more than before, if anything I’m less likely to buy it…

  

  I understand books can get this awesome re-vamp when they come out into other media, look how far Game of Thrones has got. Written seventeen years ago it’s been brought back to new audiences through the television series; and I even saw a computer game based on it today!

  

  I just wish authors had the conviction to stick to the initial designs that they felt suited their books, the initial image that they felt summed up their creation. It’s just a bit of a cop-out to use some actor in place of a design they probably spent a lot of money and time trying to create.

Applicable to people, not however, to books.

"The Power of Gods in the Hands of Children"

  As an effort to avoid Jane Eyre for another week I thought to buy a short novel that I’ve been excited about for a while; The Midwich Cuckoos. However, in my excitement to buy The Midwich Cuckoos I either bought The Chysalids by mistake or Amazon sent me the wrong one. When I received it I was going to send it back; my joy dulled by receiving a different book, but the sender had written me a little note and I didn’t have the heart to return it.

  As a fangirl of Wyndham, and of Sci Fi generally, I knew I’d love it as soon as I read the blurb. Set in an apocalyptic future of our own world we follow the story of Davie, a child bought up in a small section of the world that has escaped ultimate destruction, the God sent ‘Tribulation’. This agrarian society functions upon fundamentalist Christian values without tolerance for mutations and base their knowledge of normality on the ‘Old people’; a technologically advanced race that destroyed the world through their own nuclear mistakes.

  Living in the country of ‘Labrador’ Davie struggles with his own father’s intense religiosity, as any mutation is destroyed; crops are razed, animals slaughtered and humans thrown to the wild ‘Fringes’ where mutations are rife. As Davie and his friends grow up they not only learn more about the intensely critical society, but how different they are themselves. Discovering at an early age they are telepathic the children learn to live in fear of being identified as ‘Blasphemes’, the worry being that the society will fear them all the more as their mutation is not noticeable at birth as a physical defect.

  The Chrysalids, like many of Wyndham’s novels, shows the nature of humanity in extreme situations. Not only that; but it shows the possible catastrophic futures within the post war era that Wyndham was writing. After reading this book, not only is my love for Wyndham renewed, but I think I’ve found a new favourite book. I would completely recommend this novel.

Midwich Cuckoos just fell into my Amazon basket...