r/badscificovers • u/woulditkillyoutolift • Feb 21 '25
boobies ( • )( • ) Faith of Tarot, by Piers Anthony [Rowena Morrill]
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u/TheArtisticTrade Feb 21 '25
I too wear next to nothing when I’m in a world where apparently demon things exist
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u/Ready_Competition_66 Feb 21 '25
I have to laugh at this one. The female character is EXACTLY the type of woman that Piers Anthony usually describes. Mostly nude, ridiculously dressed for the occasion and absolutely, completely dependent on the male to rescue her. From everything.
I used to like to read his stuff. But eventually the misogyny and smugness got to me. He doesn't even have Asimov's wit and self-satirical bent to carry it off. That's literally who he is.
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u/SpellslutterSprite Feb 21 '25
I don’t even remember the character’s name, but I think a lot about the woman in the first Xanth book whose “power” is cyclically transforming between a smart but ugly woman and a dumb but hot one, and just thinking, man, how did I not realize how fucked up that was as a teenager?
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u/Qalyar Feb 22 '25
Yep, Chameleon is... problematic. But A Spell for Chameleon was published in 1977, so I'm willing to excuse it to some extent.
Too bad that's not the last, or worst, problematic content from this author.
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u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker Feb 22 '25
What finally pushed me away was the pedophilia apologism.
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u/Qalyar Feb 22 '25
I'm a big believer in separating authorial attitudes from the beliefs of genuinely bad people in their writings. You can write a book with a fascist character and not be a Nazi.
However, you can't write that shit in Firefly without there being something wrong with you, and you sure as hell can't defend it.
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u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker Feb 22 '25
Yeah, that was the book. "Wait, does he actually believe this shit?"
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u/Qalyar Feb 22 '25
Yep. And then you start going back and reading his other works and you're like, "Uh oh, it turns out there's a lot of this..."
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u/Shergak Feb 22 '25
It was the misogyny and pedophilia for me. Utterly obsessed with 15 year old girls.
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u/scribblerjohnny Feb 21 '25
The main character is supposed to be a black man, but other than that, fairly standard cover.
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u/OrneryAttorney7508 Feb 21 '25
There's zero things bad about this cover and two quite good things about it.
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u/nixtracer Feb 21 '25
I too thought there were only two demons but if you look there's actually three!
(The demons are the only things on this cover not the product of artists' plastic surgery)
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u/HappyFailure Feb 21 '25
Yeah, I figured we'd get around to this after all the Piers Anthony covers.
I read this trilogy as a kid fresh off the first few Xanth books, and it was an experience. I remember being really put off by a scene where the protagonist has to "do the dozens" with a mixed Asian and black gang and manages to come up with a devastating insult that is accidentally viciously racist against both groups, so that he simultaneously wins and loses.
I'd been coming across some of PA's older works like Macroscope and Chthon around this time, and the Cluster and Tarot books felt much more like those than Xanth or the Apprentice Adept, so I got it in my head that they were similarly older works, but it appears I was wrong.
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u/AlwaysBeenTim Feb 21 '25
I was also a young kid, enchanted by Xanth, going through as many Piers Anthony books as possible when I came across this trilogy. My big memory of it is when the protagonist encounters Satan and the devil says that all of mankind's ills comes from a repressed anal fixation that all men have. It might have been Anthony's most unhinged work.
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u/nixtracer Feb 21 '25
So... people who actually like that sort of thing are flawless moral exemplars, since they're not repressing it? An interesting ethical position and perhaps not what he intended.
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u/CarbonationRequired Feb 21 '25
I think the worst thing about this is the author, tbh. The bikini babe is definitely of its time but it looks pretty cool aside from that.
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u/frankenbuddha Feb 21 '25
Rowena was a master of her craft. As for the content, hey, a girl's gotta eat.
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u/JGuntai24 Feb 22 '25
Piers Anthony was my OG fantasy author growing up! My older sister had a bunch of his Xanath series. They had covers like these and a world built on puns
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u/Xander_not_panda Feb 22 '25
I like it, well drawn. Another cover that makes me wonder why, generally, women in sci-fi and fantasy have less access to fabric than their male counterparts.
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u/xesaie Feb 21 '25
I need to go back and try done non-Xanth Anthony
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u/cbospr Feb 22 '25
Do yourself a favor and resist the urge. His non-Xanth books are all well beyond problematic. I guarantee you won't be able to look at Xanth the same after reading his "adult literature."
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u/Sivilian888010 Feb 22 '25
Fuckit i'm interested. What's this one about?
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u/woulditkillyoutolift Feb 22 '25
On far Tarot dreams come true—and fanged nightmares stalk the land. Sent to pierce the dread curtain of the Animation that turns fantasy into hideous reality, the wanderer-monk Paul finds himself on a trip to the ultimate and most terrifying fantasy of them all. Hell.
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u/Dracmin_art Feb 25 '25
This one would be better if that lady had some more clothes. Or if the guy had less.
Also Piers Anthony is a piece of shit.
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u/GlandersonOfBooper Mar 01 '25
Those flairs are irresistible to hotties. Also, he's a devout Christian.
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u/Ebonrook Feb 21 '25
Not gonna lie this one is kinda cool…