Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn by Matthew Hughes.

As magic begins to reassert its ancient dominion, Old Earth’s foremost freelance discriminator, Henghis Hapthorn, and his intuition (now a separate person named Osk Rievor), are living apart, though they remain on good terms. But now there comes between them a woman of alluring mystery. Who is Hespira? Does she truly want either of them? Or has she come to destroy them both?

I love Tom Kidd’s artwork. His delicate yet ornate work compells the viewer to explore the image, to look a little closer, and sets an otherworldly tone. His palette and his approach give a sense of fragility and organic structure that surprises considering the subject matter (wizards, spaceships, etc.) It’s appropriate that he does the covers for the Henghis Hapthorn books, since he also does all the covers for Jack Vance-related titles for Subterranean Press, and I hear that the Henghis Hapthorn setting is Dying Earth-inspired. So the art forges another connection between the two nicely.

Henghis Hapthorn the character is called “Holmesian” by Publishers Weekly, and I’m intrigued by the setting, so I may give the series a look, even though I tend to avoid what you might call fantasy detective fiction.

EDIT: The author informs me in a comment:

“I thought you might like to know: the cover of Hespira is actually the right hand third of one long oil painting, the other two thirds comprising the covers of the first two books in the series, Majestrum and The Spiral Labyrinth. The painting won Tom Kidd an award at the World Fantasy Convention in 2007, where I saw it. It was subsequently purchased by a fan of mine.”

The first three chapters are available to read for free on his website, so be sure to check them out.

Purchase Hespira.
Purchase Majestrum, the first Tale of Henghis Hapthorn.