Fool's Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool's Fate by Robin Hobb, HarperCollins Voyager 2001
One of the greatest pleasures of working on a Robin Hobb series is doing the border that will frame the pictures, titles and texts for the series. It's a huge investment in time and work that is compensated of course by only having to do it once (and invoice for it thrice) and sets the graphic look of the books. Alas, the editor is obliged to fiddle with the colours in order to differentiate between each volume, so it is a pleasure to be able to show what they really are like. (Any major fiddling with a dominant colour totally eliminates any subtlety in the original.)
The frames are traps too, of course - this one has space for 10 vignettes, which seems a great idea until the time comes to do them. The symbols refer to the runes on the standing stones that Robin has scattered throughout her world, troubling and dangerous reminders of lost magics. The two of the decorative reliefs are pure Romanesque and Celtic, though (honest!) I did invent the other two. One is vaguely medieval, but the other is definitely Numenorian, but that's another chapter...
And that rune on the spine is indeed a rather complicated RH...
The Tawny Man Book 1: Fool's Errand - hardcover
The Tawny Man Book 2: The Golden Fool - trade paperback
The Tawny man Book 3: Fool's Fate - hardcover
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