I’m madly excited to show you the full character art for These Shattered Spires, a gothic fantasy with undead nuns and curses galore. Taro, Nixie, Alix, and Elliot were brought to life by the wondrous
@thelolloco who took every detail about these toxic weirdos and turned them into these AMAZING portraits.
🦴 Taro, a bone arcanist who draws power from skeletal remains, is a sarcastic ultragoth who revels in her abilities and happily covers herself in bone regalia. Here you can see her in a ribcage corset, with bones up her arms and slicked-back hair that makes her look like a beetle. (Hot.)
🍃 Nixie is a botanic arcanist, and as someone who draws power from plants, she has been drawn with lots of nods to her discipline: wrist sheathes like gardening gloves, super-detailed floral embroidery, and the calm gaze typical of poison-lovers (and chronic overachievers).
📕 Alix is a former stone arcanist and current library-dweller. As someone right at the bottom of the ladder Alix’s clothes are fairly minimalistic, with a touch of neo-brutalism. I love that you can see their binding under their clothing, and their pencil, which doubles as a weapon.
🩸 Lastly we have Elliot, a blood disciple whose lavish portrait includes a velvet jacket embroidered with jewelled blood and my favourite detail - a bleeding sword-pierced heart at his collar. (Zoom in, it’s glorious.) The smirk on his face is just right; he’s always very pleased with himself.
I was already excited when the sketches came in, but when the full colour art turned up I was genuinely shocked by how well everything had been captured. I feel very lucky to have had such an amazing artist for these portraits. They also appear (in black and white) in the front of the book, alongside a super-detailed map of the Desecrae by
@virginiaallyn and of course the amazingly dramatic cover by
@danlinz_art !
These Shattered Spires, the first installment in the gothic fantasy trilogy Wyrdos, is out with Bloomsbury worldwide on March 10th. You can preorder it from your favourite bookshop, add it to Goodreads, or pre-save the audiobook wherever you get yours. Netgalley ARCs are also available! Links in bio 🖤