Secret Country landscapes?

[pameladean]

This is perhaps a long shot, but I want to try it. It's been decided that the covers of the reprints of the three Secret Country books shall have "sweeping landscapes" on them. I have no objection to this whatsoever, and think it could product a stunning set of covers. However, I was kindly asked if I could come up with one signature landscape for each of the three novels, preferably each with a different palette, and my memory is so faulty these days that I'm actually having to reread all the books. Again. So if anybody out there has a vivid recollection of a landscape in any of those books, that might make good cover art, please, please, let me know. You can send email or just post in the Comments section. Thank you so much.

Pamela

Comments

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

From Dubious Hills (the only one I have) -- when Ari goes on the long walk to find Halver, and they keep going up and up -- it looks like heather to me, and what I've seen of the highlands, and purple clover, and rolls of hills off into the distance.

[pameladean]

That's very close to its inspiration. Unfortunately, that one is not being reprinted. It has a lot more landscape than the three that are.

Pamela

[eub.livejournal.com]

First book: the forest flowering. Or has that got too many trees for proper sweeping? It's my most vivid outdoorness from any of the three. Palette of greens and jewels.

Second book: hmm. Armies ranged on the desert, mountains behind? I have no clear picture of it, though. Palette of earths, say reddish-brown.

Third book: the lake of the dead. Bare rock and low clouds and mist clinging to the water, was it? Palette of basalt-black and pearl-grey, tinged cold blue by skylight.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

In the first book, the ... okay, everything I think of isn't exactly a landscape, or rather, it's a landscape interrupted by something. Like the unexpectedly pink castle, which I've always been ridiculously fond of. Or: Claudia's house, which is so impressively sinister, or the well. I haven't read the second two books recently enough to remember the landscapes worth a bean, unfortunately.

But huzzah, hooray! I'm so thrilled they're being reprinted! They're some of my favorite books and it took *ages* for me to find copies of Whim of the Dragon and Hidden Country, so huzzah! I suspect I'll have to buy copies of the reprints on general principles. *happy dance, happy dance*

[papersky.livejournal.com]

1. The well of the white witch, with Claudia's house, and rolling green hills and distant mountains looking unexpectedly like mountains.
OR
the forest of the unicorn hunt, full of flowers.

2. The well of the white witch, if they use the unicorn hunt, if not, the castle (pink!) with moat and layered landscape falling away.

3. Claudia's house by the lake, with lake, just give them a postcard of Wast Water.

[pameladean]

Thank you, thank you! I have been enabled by all your superior memories to look up page numbers and make some halfway-intelligent suggestions. It now seems evident that WHIM should have water on the cover.

Pamela

i thank you too.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

because i am the one who asked our hostess the question.

Re: i thank you too.

[pameladean]

Look, look, it's my brilliant editor, without whom there would be no reprints to fret about the covers on!

Pamela

Re: i thank you too.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

[blushing furiously]

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Darnitall, I want to see the books reprinted in part because I don't remember them clearly. It is my curse as a reader to have details of books slip from my Swiss-cheese-like memory. Sometimes they stick; sometimes they don't.

No author should be offended at this; I also remember and forget names and faces in the same fashion.

[pameladean]

Well, look, if I can't remember myself I don't see why I should be offended if somebody who did not even write the books can't.

Besides, really and truly there is not a lot of landscape in them. There's a vast deal of conversation, much of it under a roof; descriptions of landscape are fairly brief and infrequent. Most of the moments I really remember fondly are not visual at all -- even if they have a visual component, that's not the primary thing about them.

Pamela

[(Anonymous)]

As regards landscapes, all I would say has already been mentioned, but I do want to say how glad I am that the books are coming back into print. I only know one other person who has a complete set of them (besides me), and the convolutions we went through to get the completing books were rather odd; and there are so many folks I think should read 'em, only I haven't been able to put another complete set together and it's not fair to give them an incomplete set.

I still am boggled by finding The Hidden Land in a used bookshop in Cardiff.

Thanks...