Back in January, during this year’s Guest Bloggerama, Stan Wagenaar reviewed Keith Taylor’s ‘Danans’ series of heroic fantasy novels. Stan did a great job of providing an overview of those neglected books, which can be found here.

The only downside to the review, in my opinion, was that even the best cover from the series, The Cauldron of Plenty, was just okay. Rendered in the ‘realistic’ style favored since about 1980 by art directors, Dean Morrissey’s cover—like his other two Danans covers—was static, obviously painted from a model and did nothing to invite the potential reader to check out the wonder and adventure which lay within. It didn’t even illustrate anything in particular from the story.

At the time—as I had often done before—I thought about what a shame it was that Irish fantasy artist extraordinaire, Jim FitzPatrick, hadn’t been hired by Ace Books to do the Danans covers. Thus, this post.

Keith Taylor had been well-served by Ace Books previously. Ace had gotten the excellent Don Maitz to do the covers for the ‘Bard’ novels. While I think Maitz would’ve done fine on the Danans books, I believe that FitzPatrick would’ve done an even better job. In his classic illustrated books like The Book of Conquests and The Silver Arm, FitzPatrick faithfully illustrated the Gaelic legends that formed the basis for Taylor’s tales. On top of that, Keith has been a FitzPatrick fan since the mid-’70s.

So, let’s get on with this. I’ll link to the Morrissey covers and then I’ll provide examples of FitzPatrick art that fits within the general parameters of what the three Danans covers would/should have required.

The Morrissey cover for The Sorcerer’s Sacred Isle can be found here. It’s…almost like Morrissey didn’t even read the book. I guess that is Cena—queen of the Danans—on the throne. The whole thing appears to be set in the High Medieval/Renaissance era. The Danans were somewhat ahead of the curve in a few ways, but the novel is definitely set in the late Bronze Age. No question about it. I could almost be okay with such inaccuracy if it was rendered in a dynamic way, but it’s not. The map behind the two posed/modeled/static figures does nothing to help, either.

Here are a couple of FitzPatrick works to cleanse your artistic palate:

This is a fairly recent piece from Jim depicting Queen Medb and Fergus mac Roich, two of the primary characters in the Irish epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge. Medb is a dead ringer for Queen Cena—or vice versa. This encapsulates the feel of the novel far better than Morrissey’s painting.

At the end of The Sorcerer’s Sacred Isle, three serpentine demons—the Despoilers—are unleashed. It just so happens that there is a similar scene in FitzPatrick’s The Book of Conquests. The demons are even summoned by an old woman. This could have been—with almost zero alteration—the cover for ‘Sacred Isle’.

Sacred Isle. Compare it to the static crap that Morrissey phoned in.

The Morrissey cover for The Cauldron of Plenty can be found here. [Sigh] This is the best of the bunch, by the way. I guess the dude on horseback is supposed to be Nemed. Nemed is a renegade Danan pirate—not bandit—chieftain who’s looking to move up in the world by stealing the Freths’ magical cauldron. He’s a formidable pirate, not a horse-lord. I don’t think Nemed is ever said to ride a horse at any time in the novel. Did I mention that the map in the background is stupid?

Anyway, Queen Cena sends her most trusted kith and kin after Nemed before the Freths start a war the Danans might lose. That band of adventurers ends up traversing more than one Otherworld—as Celtic heroes are wont to do—before they catch up with Nemed. Here are a couple of Otherworldly artworks by FitzPatrick:

Neither one of those awesome paintings matches up exactly with scenes from The Cauldron of Plenty, but I am absolutely sure that Jim could’ve come up with something that conveyed the strangeness and dread of the Otherworlds in Keith’s novel far better than some dude on a horse.

Morrissey’s cover for Search for the Starblade can be found here. That is Oghma, the Conan-level Danan champion on the left. He looks like Cliff Clavin on steroids. With a ponytail. The guy on the right is Cairbre, his brother. Cairbre—in the novels—is like Felimid mac Fal, only somewhat more bad-ass.* Morrissey makes these life-takers and heart-breakers look like two drunken louts stumbling away from some low-rent Ren fest. Once again, the map background is stupid; just less so than the first two covers.

In this novel, Oghma sets off to find something better than the bronze swords he continually breaks in battle. Being a good Celtic kinsman, Cairbre journeys alongside his brother on the—possibly quixotic—quest. He brings along his mighty enchanted harp, Golden Singer, which will pass down to Felimid mac Fal millennia later.

There you have it. An Irish swordsman and an Irish harper on a Bronze Age road trip to find a super-weapon. This was always the easiest to match with an existing FitzPatrick painting. In the late ‘80s, Jim painted an iconic image of an Irish sword with an Irish harp behind it and an Irish shield behind that. That painting became the cover for Morgan Llywelyn’s novel, Bard. Something along those lines would’ve been awesome for ‘Starblade’.

How cool is that?

While Jim’s flavor of fantasy art might not have been ‘in style’ at the big publishing houses during the early ‘90s—he did do a cover for Morgan Llewelyn’s Finn Mac Cool during that period—I can’t help but think FitzPatrick’s art would’ve connected far better with Taylor’s core audience than Morrissey’s phoned-in, inaccurate, static covers.

Jim FitzPatrick’s website can be found here.

The new Kindle editions of the Danans novels can be found here.

*Felimid mac Fal was, according to Taylor, the direct descendant of Cairbre.