Long time ago, when the world was still young and this blog was in its early childhood, I wrote a post in which I trained the spotlight on some chess-themed book covers and mocked them viciously 1 in front of all five of my readers. Since I am merciless in my crusade against heretics, and since I am bereft of new ideas, I will do so again today. I haven’t read most of these books, so I will judge them by their covers. Harshly.
Diane Broeckhoven, De buitenkant van meneer Jules, Eenvoudig Communiceren
I don’t know anything about Diane Broeckhoven, so I don’t know what she did wrong to deserve an easy-language version of her book, but that’s apparently what she got. The story is apparently about an old woman who finds her husband dead on the sofa one morning and how she deals with that sudden death. The cover suggests she does so by playing 1.e3, which I do not necessarily condone but which I cannot condemn either.
Realism: 5/5 1. e3 is not a very common opening move, but there are quite a few examples in my database.
Probable winner: Jules is dead, which leads me to suspect that, perhaps, Jules’ opponent has the better chances.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes, Debols!llo
This title appears also in the previous book cover post I did, but in a different edition. It also appears — not because of its cover but because of the content — in a separate post, because chess plays a very important role in it. The position here is clear enough to warrant a diagram:2
No kings are visible; perhaps they’re holding a peace conference somewhere on white’s king’s side. The black queen has fallen over, but the position of its base suggests it was on c7. Moreover, the pawn on a5 is halfway on b5. Worst of all, this position has nothing whatsoever to do with the position given in the book.
Realism: 0/5 Admittedly, the book itself is also highly unrealistic, so perhaps the cover is well chosen. But the missing kings are a real eyesore. Even without that, the completely random distribution of pieces hurts.
Probable winner: Nobody. There is no king to mate.3
Katherine Neville, The eight, Open road
This one really annoys me. I don’t just mean the fact that the squares are too many and too small, like mosquitoes. I don’t just mean that the pawns are suspiciously absent or that the squares are at an angle of /4 with the pieces. I don’t even mean that the most obviously eight-related thing on a chessboard — its bloody dimensions — are wrong and not eight-related at all here. I mean that that’s not an eight! Not every lemniscate is an eight, goddammit, some of them are infinity symbols! And this one isn’t even that. It’s curling over the front and behind the back of thee pieces, so it must be some three-dimensional object with non-trivial curvature.
Realism: 0/5 There is no realism. There is only misery and, darkness, and a white lemniscate that vaguely look like a pair of eyes.
Probable winner: Nobody. there is no opposing army.
1. [I learned that cantrip on level 1.] ↩
2. [Diagram galore.] ↩
3. [Perhaps that’s because of the loneliness epidemic I hear so often about.] ↩