Invention of the Sound Sphere (Sonton Lawson #1)
There are times when the book’s description says it all:
Sonton Lawson a binturong and his friends try to find out why someone wants to steal three of the company’s plans. What use can the person or persons have for a flying machine, a sage (car), and a tunneler. Is there some evil reason or some other reason behind all of this?
And it doesn’t even look like a binturong.
Fortunately, it doesn’t look like an Orc, either.
I’m more concerned with the seam line down the neck. It implies that this isn’t a poorly drawn binturong, but someone wearing a poorly drawn binturong mask!
Or hand puppet.
1. Who is the author, Sonton Lawson or R.A. Danger? They both sound like porn film stage names.
2. Binturongs have mullets?
Oh, this is a sad cover. It looks like they tried to erase whatever the smear is above the cut-out dog.
It also seems like the author-artist proudly put his initials on this artwork twice, once on the line and the second time on top of the hairy sphere.
And the author info is even greater: “Born during an awakening of a volcano. Went to school up to two years of college, most of my schooling been what I read or did. Like to draw and write and do some programming and a little music. Tend to live in many worlds in a day.” What the what what?
I can’t help but think that Amazon and Smashwords need to start filtering self publishers. Not saying they should start banning people, but four simple tests would do the trick:
1. Age test, to prevent kids like this one from playing with things that are not toys
2. IQ test
3. Sanity test
4. A simple grammar test.
5. Number of cats
That one would immediately disqualify me. I have three.
On second thought, scratch number 3. Insane writers can be fun.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure some of the greatest writers in history might qualify as insane. Not sure about the IQ test either.
I can get behind 1 and 4, though.
It doesn’t have to be a rigorous IQ test. Just to disqualify the obvious dumbasses. Average to slightly below average is cool. Although, if someone’s not smart enough to learn basic grammar when going into writing and self publishing, then they probably wouldn’t pass the IQ test. So, maybe 4 would be enough.
Is anyone else seeing a sad face with a chipmunk for a nose?
I think the image is actually the Sonton Lawson family crest:
Disembodied Chipmunk head floating over pile of steaming poop.
It is, as the subliminal initials imply, RAD!
I like that the very first and most important detail there is that Sonton is a binturong. Binturongs are seriously some of the most sad-sack-looking animals I’ve ever seen.