Maia: The Official Illustrated Edition
Written by Richard Adams
Passionately Illustrated by Echo Chernik
Maia may very well be the pinnacle of erotic fantasy, especially when combined with the incomparable illustrations of Echo Chernik, who has been favorably compared to Alphonse Mucha and Arthur Rackham.
(Below are composite images of the planned finished product. Not the actual finished product.)
Maia: The Official Illustrated Edition has been fully endorsed by Richard Adams' estate and will include the entire original published text in both black and gold ink, plus 105 unique chapter head illustrations, many interior illustrations, and even full-color plates, all by Echo Chernik.
1,000 signed and numbered copies will be printed, each hard-cover, custom bound with the finest materials and techniques, gilded edges, and exquisite endpapers.
The basic numbered edition will begin at $300*. The price rises to secure lower edition numbers, and lastly, Echo is offering a very rare few the opportunity for her to paint on the fore-edge of the lowest numbered editions beginning at $3,000.*
* with discounts for early-birds through Patreon and EchoChernik.com
A book of this quality, with a story so incredible and illustrations so luxurious, has never been published before.
About the Author and Novel
Richard George Adams (9 May 1920 – 24 December 2016) was an English novelist who wrote Watership Down, Maia, Shardik, and The Plague Dogs. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British Army during World War II. Afterwards, he completed his studies, and then joined the British Civil Service. In 1974, two years after Watership Down was published, Adams became a full-time author.
(Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Adams)
From The New York Times:
Tritel, Barbara. "A BED-SLAVE IN BELKA" THE NEW YORK TIMES (Jan. 13, 1985): Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/13/books/a-bedslave-in-belka.html.
Maia is a sexy, swashbuckling and hugely long romp. . . Maia takes place in the same remote fantasy civilization that was the setting for Shardik, although the events in the newer book antedate those in Shardik by a few years . . .
His inventiveness in Maia is a complete delight. The novel takes place in several different lands, and sets forth several distinct languages, landscapes, cultures and cosmologies. Like J. R. R. Tolkien, to whom he has frequently been compared, Mr. Adams is positively obsessive in his creation of complete worlds, including currencies and customs, flora, fauna and weather patterns. He is like an anthropologist posted at the door to his own imagination . . .
But Maia is far better written than its predecessor. The book is named after its heroine, a gorgeous . . . peasant girl in the provinces who has an unusual facility for getting out of her chores. At her wits' end, her [step-]mother sells the girl to some flesh-traders, and thus begin Maia's extraordinary adventures as a bed-slave in the capital city of Bekla.
Maia has much of the ingenuous quality of Dorothy of Kansas, and Bekla is indeed a little like Oz. But instead of cute little Munchkins, Bekla is filled with licentious gourmands and other kinkos right out of the Satyricon. With her best friend and sometimes lover, Occula - an exotic black slave girl from across the desert and, as her name suggests, one possessed of occult knowledge - Maia is purchased by the most decadent Beklan of all, Sencho, the chief of Intelligence. (Sencho is so fat that he can't walk more than a few steps by himself and needs several pillows to support his belly when he sits down). Meanwhile, there are plots afoot to purge the empire of its decadent rulers, and Maia unwittingly becomes the enemy of a very envious and wicked queen.
Well, the rest is just so much Star Wars and lots of fun. Maia is like the Princess Leia with libido, and Occula is a tough-talking lesbian version of Han Solo. But what George Lucas did with visual images, reinventing the way we might look at something as commonplace as a barroom scene, Mr. Adams delivers in language, and with far more dexterity than he ever exhibited in . . . Shardik. He adds to the language invented in the earlier novel, finding a need in "Maia" for a revitalized vocabulary of dirty words. The freshness of the language does much to keep Maia above the pulpy mire to which it might be relegated were all the swearing and sexual admiration expressed in more familiar terms . . .
About the Illustrator and Art
Echo Chernik has been called the "Premiere Art Nouveau Artist of her generation" and has illustrated countless books and posters and product designs, with clients ranging from the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to Disney. Her works have appeared in theaters, libraries, and grocers nationwide, United States Postal Service offices, and publications of every kind. In 2008, she began bringing her personal vision of what it means to be a powerful woman to the public. Sometimes that has included erotica and other times it includes simple unashamed nudity that elicits awe and admiration in her audience.
Echo read Maia when it was first released in the United States, and credits it with inspiring her artistic vision. Illustrating it is a dream come true, and her passion pours through every line.
Please find below a composite of how the interior will appear in print:
*The comp provider is MIXAM Press, although the final printer has not yet been chosen.
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