affinity photo Experimental Book Covers – Pulling Child

[GarryP]

Here are some experimental book covers which I made a while back – after reading the last book in Neal Asher’s very good “Transformation” series – and rediscovered in a recent housekeeping exercise.
They’re all basic – just me playing around with ideas – but I thought I’d share them as I haven’t shared any new stuff for a while.
All are variations on the same book title in different genres: “Acid Punk”; 2 x “Basic Sci-Fi”; “Olde Worlde”; and “Standard Thriller”.
(Reader’s of Neal’s books may get where the title and some of the imagery of my covers come from.)

[AlunR]

I like Asher's work very much. Have read many series including the Ower trilogy, Rise of the Jain etc. Do you know what puling child means? A whinging, bleating or crying child. It was the orginal name given to Penny Royal.

[GarryP]

@AlunR A proper answer to your question would necessarily include spoilers and I don’t want to do that. (It involves the reason why the Penny Royal AI gave itself that name which is only revealed bit-by-bit and late on in the books.)

A shorter answer is that Pennyroyal - spelt without the space - is one name for a herb which is/was used in traditional medicine for inducing miscarriages (and other things). The phrase Pulling Child refers – somewhat euphemistically – to that kind of procedure and is also, I think, another name for the same herb (which has little purple flowers, as in the fourth book cover). It also refers to various other story arcs within the Transformation series in various ways, including why that was the name of Penny Royal's ship, so I don’t want to say much more. It’s a great series of novels and well-worth a read.