When Ildefonso Falcones‘s Cathedral of the Sea showed up in my mailbox last week, I thought, wow, Dutton really wants to push that Ken Follett comparison, don’t they? Eventually, I realized that I was subconsciously conflating the twin “pillars” in the World Without End cover with the image of the cathedral for The Pillars of the Earth, and that echoed with the “between-the-arches” perspective on the Cathedral jacket. But I also figured out that they’re totally using the same typeface for both authors. The only difference is that the first letters in the Falcones cover are slightly larger.
As it happens, while Dutton did subtly work that typographical resonance in, the cover art concept actually goes back to the original Spanish-language edition.