Just to prime the pump (and possibly to silence legions of annoying, yammering, l33tspkg fans) Bloomsbury has released the cover designs for the last book in JK Rowling‘s series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is delighted to release the book jacket images for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K.Rowling, to be published on 21st July 2007. The cover illustration for the children’s edition is by Jason Cockcroft, who drew the cover illustrations for the previous two Harry Potter books… The cover design for the adult edition is from a photograph by Michael Wildsmith, who has photographed all the adult edition jackets…These covers will be used throughout the world on the English language editions excluding the USA. Scholastic US have also released their cover images of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows…

and look, here it is:

Better than the British one (you have to view the full wraparound version on their crappy Flash page), if more individualistic. What does that say about the relative values of each nation? That Daniel Radcliffe has a better US agent than Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, that’s what.

Actually, the best one is the British adult version(warning: is pig-dog to load and has a tendency to crash my computer. Funny, you’d think Slytherin would be raincoaster-positive), with Slytherin‘s locket. Although who would have imagined that Slytherin would be caught dead wearing anything as femme-y as a locket?

Also, why are publishers so enamoured of Flash? These pages are a bitch to load, and that cutsie owl hooting that Scholastic features during the load just about makes me want to go out and strangle the next owl I see.

Or publisher.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::