Gail Simone released her first novel, Red Sonja: Consumed, this week through the fantasy and science fiction imprint Orbit, a subsidiary of the Hachette Book Group. However, long-time fans are mocking the cover art as a lazy job from the publisher.
The Red Sonja character was developed by Roy Thomas and Bary Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics in the 1970s as a foil for Conan The Barbarian. The buxom redhead has been used in a largely fan service capacity over the last several decades, with a trademark of bikini armor making her into something readers enjoyed for male gaze purposes.
When the character spun off into her own series, Red Sonja was famously drawn by Frank Thorne, who was famous for his erotic fantasy art.
In recent years, the publishing industry has tried to downplay the character’s highly sexualized nature, turning her into a feminist ideal like much of the rest of the fantasy industry. Current iterations like Dynamite’s Immortal Red Sonja have tried to cover her up for modern audiences.
Gail Simone is no stranger to the character, having written a run on the comic, which is highly regarded by many. However, the run does reference the bikini chainmail multiple times, making jokes about it to “offset” the character’s sexualized nature. She caused some controversy as well by changing the backstory to not have the character be a victim of sexual assault.
Now, Gail Simone is releasing her first-ever prose novel, something of an accomplishment for her already long and credentialed career. She’s returning to the Red Sonja character for this novel. However, it appears that Hachette made their cover design for modern audiences rather than long-time sword & sorcery fantasy fans.
Hugo Award Finalist Cirsova Magazine posted to X about the situation first, saying “wow, did they really put a generic photocomposit stock art sword cover on a Red Sonja book?”
Cirsova Magazine is known for remaining true to the classic pulp era with adventure and swashbuckling in a stylistic fashion, also with epic covers from artists leaning into classic style books or with manga/anime influences.
Their post quote-tweeted a retailer advertising the book, who was savaged in the comments as Red Sonja is notoriously missing from the cover in favor of a modern style with a photoshop of a sword with some red hair swirling around it in grey clouds.
Many modern fantasy books suffer from these covers, trying to appeal to the romance demographic rather than traditional fantasy readers. A big trend has been not even to have characters on the cover, which doesn’t speak to the book’s contents at all.
With Red Sonja, it seems a wasted opportunity, as the sexy character is a large draw for potential readers.
One X User replied with his AI-created image of the character, “Wow, 5 minutes with AI and some touch up and even I can make a better cover.”
It seems a wasted marketing opportunity for Orbit, and the book sales do not appear impressive based on recent Amazon numbers. The book is currently sitting at #43,163 on the Kindle Store, which is not impressive for a day one release. Perhaps Red Sonja readers judged a book by its cover.
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