So the first time I see this book, being a gamer geek, I'm thinking, "Cool! Someone wrote a book with a dwarf instead of a human as the hero!"
Except, when I read the back cover, it didn't mention anything about a dwarf. So I open it up to the middle of the book. I do that when I'm considering reading a book for the first time. If the middle couple of pages seem interesting to me enough that I want to find out how the story got to that point, I know it'll be okay. Except, in the middle of the book, there was this stuff about the Kurii, and the description seemed vaguely bear-like, but not really. And the Kurii seem to be negotiating passage through some land and demanding that the humans offer some of their "bond maids" as food for themselves. Huh? So I look at the front cover again.
First of all, is the not-dwarf. Note the stocky muscle-boundedness of him. Note the viking hat. Note the fact that he appears proportioned to be about three feet tall. Is that not a dwarf? No. It's a Not-Dwarf.
Then note the "Kurii". Bear. That is not a strange being. That is not an odd race of sentient. That. Is a fucking bear. Just a plain, ordinary bear. He's obviously a touchy and kind of irritated bear, but a bear nonetheless.
And then note the chick. She is, I assume because I have not gotten that far into the book, a bond maid. A female slave. Whatever. But examine her proportions. In comparison to the not-dwarf, she's like, eleven feet tall. And Not-Dwarf looks...dwarf-like.
I realize that he's supposed to be coming up over a hill, supposedly to save the bond maid from the wrath of the evil Kurii(bear). But he still looks three feet tall. Maybe four.
Now, note the expressions on the humanoids' faces. We won't look at the bear for this. Obviously, the bear is annoyed. But look at Not-Dwarf. He's got this expression on his face like, "Ooo! Pretty bear!" His features are soft, he has a kind of serene smile of wonder on his dwarfy face, and he looks like he's kind of standing there, holding his axe as if he were trotting up over the hill and stopped dead in his tracks to stare at the wonder of the bear.
And look at the chick's face. Does that seem like a scream of terror? No. No, it doesn't. Examine it closely, and it looks much more like she's cackling like a loon. "Hahahahahahaha! Look at me! I'm captured by a bear! BEARS! Hahahahahaha! Whee!" And as a note, her leg looks about as long as Not-Dwarf's entire body.
Never mind the astroturf that's passin' for grass, there.
Now, one or two of you might say, "Pfeh. Can you do any better?" Yes. Yes, I can. See, when going to school and looking at a slide of The Great Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux during my Art History class, my professor had pointed out, "It doesn't matter that the paintings aren't anatomically accurate. What matters is that the artists conveyed what they had intended. That's what makes good art."
In that regard, stick figures could potentially be better art than this is.
Also, I apologize for the picture. It is not a bad scan. The book is very old and in gloriously heinous condition. And I'm sorry that it appears as if the title of the novel is "Marauders of Goo" because the cover got messed up. Wasn't originally my book. Sorry.