NBM's Luis Royo books
III Millennium
Evolution
Women
Secrets
(NBM) 
III Millennium (1998) Not appropriate for children or adolescents. Also known as THIRD MILLENIUM, this book is rather a mixed bag. 65 art pages in an 80 page book is not bad, but a number of the images on display are sketches, roughs or alternate versions of other paintings within. All but 11 pages carry large reproductions. The theme would seem to be dark apocalyptic visions, but follow-thru is rather spotty with the occasional text pages being poems, excerpts and original writing by the artist, as if messages were being sent from the horrific futures. A number of the works expand well past the central gutter, some into full double-page spreads, and I would judge them all to be still 'o.k.' in that format. Most of the pieces are captioned with a title and what use it was originally put to, as well as the creation-year and metric-dimensions. Depiction of adult themes is not in short supply, so this book should be put away from minors. So far, this is the highest-ranking collection of Royo's work on The List
Evolution (2001) Another 80 page volume collecting Royo's art (and another painting on the back cover). Refreshingly, though there is some nudity, this book does not veer into adult-theme territory like many of his others. A significant number of images are devoted to the apocalyptic blonde swordswoman he calls Malefic. In fact, there's a couple of pages regarding the design of a sculpture of her. A majority of the rest of this presentation is his cover work for any number of projects, literary, musical or gaming. Most works are captioned with its title, metric-size, creation-year and publisher. So, there are 14 pages gathering together two or more paintings or drawings, and another 53 featuring large reproductions, half in full-bleed splendor. Among those are seven large works that are laid across the book's gutter, mostly as full double-page-spreads. They all hold together well though 'broken' like that - most seem to have been wraparound covers. Some probably being excerpts, the blocks of text throughout are atmospheric at best, providing tastes while not straightforwardly explicating the works they accompany. In all, an effective collection, with only III MILLENIUM scoring better (though there seem to be no repeats from that).
Women (1997) Not appropriate for children or adolescents. This is an 80-page book with 72 of those pages presenting his art. Of that number, 41 are each displaying a singular large reproduction while the rest have two or more images (and I would say those multi-image pages mostly print those paintings a bit smaller than they need to be). The book's entitled WOMEN, but there are indeed plenty of men - a good number of the works feature only men. It appears that the majority of the works are paperback covers and there are plenty of captions listing title, publisher & year and the original work's size. There isn't much real nudity to speak of, except in a short 5-page section with a number of unrelated pictures used to illustrate a voyeuristic soft-pornish narrative, which happens to be the reason that I think the book needs to be kept from minors. The List recommends III MILLENNIUM, EVOLUTION, and the even more risqué PROHIBITED 3 (and to lesser extent, 1 & 2) as better presented collections of the artist's work, but nothing from them is repeated in this one.
Secrets (1996) Not appropriate for children or adolescents. A book of 84 pages, with 43 of them being large reproductions of Royo's art. Almost every piece has a facing page with the caption (title, size, creation-year) along with some commentary from the artist (not really anecdotes, but rather usually the emotional underpinnings of the works - if there is some context, it's from fantasy mythology). Each of these caption pages has an intricate spot drawing that is related to the painting. Also, there are 5 double-page spreads, all of which work excellently (as if they were wraparound book covers, but looking at the subject matter of one or two of them, that simply can't be the case with those particular ones . . .). The adult themes between these heroines and their monstrous counterparts are sometimes graphically portrayed, so this is not a book to share with minors. III MILLENNIUM, EVOLUTION, his PROHIBITED collections and WOMEN are all recommended by The List here before this one, but know that already having those, this book is almost entirely pieces that are 'new' and not found in them.
Related Books
Heavy Metal's Luis Royo collections
other NBM releases
Wings Of Twilight - The Art Of Michael Kaluta
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