Joe Abercrombie’s next novel, Red Country, is due out in the UK from Gollancz on October 18 and in the US from Orbit on October 23. I know what I’ll be reading over the Thanksgiving break (unless I can score an ARC first). Gollancz has released the UK cover. That’s it on the right.
From what I’ve been able to learn, it seems to be a Western in a fantasy setting, where a woman seeks revenge out on the frontier.
Here’s the wraparound cover: 
The US cover looks like this:
Finally, if you’re wondering what the book is about, here’s the jacket copy:
“They burned her home.
They stole her brother and sister.
But vengeance is following.
Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own, and out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried.
Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…”
I love Abercrombie’s books, but the US covers absolutely suck in comparison to the awesome UK covers.
I agree. I’m considering ordering this one through Amazon UK.
Interesting, not as salient as some of his previous ones, though.
Wow, the US cover is awful, like the worst sort of men’s adventure book. Question – If it’s about a woman seeking revenge, why the guy? The UK one is brutal and eye-catching.
I used to order the Terry Pratchett books from England just to get the Josh Kirby or Paul Kidby covers instead of the awful US ones.
Good point about a male on the cover of a novel with a female protagonist. I suspect, and this is just speculation, mind you, that some suit in marketing decided that a heroic fantasy novel about a woman wouldn’t sell to what that individual believed was a male audience. Just another disconnect between the people in publishing who make the decisions and the people who buy and read the books. With as much rancor over changing the race of the heroine on the covers of certain YA novels in the last year or so, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the US cover generate a bit of controversy.
By no means am I defending the US cover (it blows-someone needs to suck it up and just pay for the rights to the UK versions) but I suspect that despite the quick blurb on what the book is about-it is also the long awaited return of Logen Ninefingers to Abrecrombies universe ala’ the man with no name type thing.
I do recall hearing that Logen Ninefingers is coming back in this one. I wonder if he’s the stepfather mentioned in the blurb. I didn’t think he’d died when he went off that cliff for the second time.