(Just as an aside, it's most unlikely they would have anyone alter a Sweet painting - even a work in progress - if any such thing existed. That is pretty much anathema in the visual arts world, considered pretty much on an equal footing with destructing a work. If an unfinished work exists, it will be worth much to fans of Sweet and art historians interested in his work - and not in terms of money as such - Harriet gets the paintings as I understand - but for what it reveals of his method as a painter and such. At best they'd have someone work on a new work based on his unfinished work, but that too would be a bit odd nowadays. A more proper way to pay homage to Sweet would be to reproduce the unfinished work in the book, and use something else for the cover - not that I'm saying it's too likely to happen even if there is an unfinished cover.)


Tor's Art Dir.'s formulation is a bit ambiguous, but she doesn't seem to speak about a painting for AMOL that is now left unfinished, rather than saying Sweet won't be able to see the series to completion and get his wish to have provided a painting for each book. Irene Gallo would likely have mentionned the work in progress, even if only to say a few general elogious words about it and that she's sad he died without completing it.

Normally it's too early for Sweet to have started on anything before his passing. Harriet has not even seen a first draft yet (she won't see anything from AMOL until around New Year) and it's always been her who picked from the first finished draft of a WOT book the scene that in her opinion fitted best and that Sweet would illustrate. The cover's done during the six months of editing, normally.

It's not impossible I guess Harriet has long had a scene from the outline in her mind for the last cover, but that sounds fairly unlikely she didn't wait to get the complete first draft before she got Sweet start working (no one can be sure Brandon won't be forced to move things around until he's done).

It's not like the situation was new or a surprise either. Harriet was asked on a panel a few years ago (pre-TGS) if she was considering modernizing/redesigning the WOT books or if Sweet would provide the cover again, and she said a revamping was fairly likely to happen after the series was complete, but unless Sweet's health prevented him from finishing - and she (with Doherty at her side adding his own comments) said this was alas possible as he was an old man and had been too sick to work lately and they had not even sure he would be able to do TGS until it was time to work on it, she planned to keep the old look and the same artist to the last book.

A repackaging of the series earlier than planned is certainly a likely option now, especially if they opt to go with the new design supervised by Irene Gallo for the ebooks rather than go with a whole new one - Harriet neither said that would or wouldn't be her and Tor's choice down the line - and perhaps more likely than keeping the old look when there's no point anymore with Sweet's passing. That would let Tor near a full year to gradually introduce the redesigned books on the market as the stock of books for each WOT title runs out, to familiarize people with them. Next fall, they'll have displays with all the redesigned books alongside AMOL, thus mitigating their loss of brand recognition (long time casual fans won't associate the new look with WOT yet, but they will recognize the titles). Mind you, for best selling series like WOT visual brand recognition is a bit secondary, especially when less and less people buy their books in a physical store.