We’re starting at the beginning, and possibly at the bottom as well, with this, umm…interesting cover by artist Richard Ross, scan courtesy of Twilight Tales.

Seriously, dude, this cover is possibly my biggest “WTF?” moment of any LJS book cover. Possibly any book cover ever. Like, I can’t even imagine how this cover made it to publication. It’s poorly drawn, it’s uninteresting to the casual viewer, it’s impossible to know what’s supposed to be going on unless you’ve already read the book, the characters are fug, and worst composition EVER. Who in the heck decides that one of the three people depicted on the cover will deliberately obscure the FACES of the other two? The only answer I can think of is, someone who can’t be bothered to draw faces and finds a way to do it as little as possible.

I guess we’ll start with Alys, then. Well, they got the blonde part right. She’s supposed to be tall, but it looks here like she’s the same height as her younger brother Charles. Her face is…very unfortunate. Like, wow. And she possibly has the mumps. And let’s not forget the two distinct lumps in the front of her shirt. I’m going to take a leap and assume those are pubescent breasts, except that–oh wait!–they’re at least six inches too low for that. It ends up looking like she has tumors or a deformed ribcage or something. I’m not going to go into how terrifyingly long and misshapen her arms are, because we already know those are just props to keep the artist from having to draw too much.

Then there’s poor faceless Charles. I only know he’s Charles because he’s a boy. “You could tell at a glance that Charles was Alys’s younger brother.” Right.

I’m guessing that’s Claudia in the corner. She’s wearing some bizarre 80’s sweatervest, over a turtleneck. In Southern California. Her hair is just not right. I can’t picture a rough-and-tumble kid like Claudia having such neat hair. And her mouth? Scary.

So then we have the House of Mirrors in the background. The house itself isn’t inherently terrible–I always pictured it being less egglike in shape, but, eh, if that were the least of my complaints I’d be fine. There’s also the very pressing issue of scale, which is to say, this house is the size of a storage shed. And meanwhile there are the things coming out of the windows. Am I the only one who actually had to ponder what they were? Yeah, they’re apparently, like, moonbeams reflected off mirrors or something. Moonbeams that reflected in just the right way through every single window in the house, all at the same time. Uh huh.

But logistics aside, this is what I see when I look at this cover: A tiny box that’s had dozens of swords stuck into it. This box is on a very short hill or range that’s covered in short yellow grass, with an occasional tree there to reinforce the perspective. And at the bottom of the hill are the ghosts of three children, searching the dark frantically for someone who can save them.

Sorry, Mr. Ross, but this is just sad.