Thursday, April 12, 2012

Cover Snark: Just Plain Awful



Ok, so we have the basic quasi sexy urban fantasy cover. the woman’s back is to us so she’s nice and anonymous and then we have... broken necked hero. Is he injured? Does that hurt? C’mon that’s got to hurt. Also what is wrong with that man’s eyes? Is this supposed to be his smoldering look.



 
What is this... oh dear gods, hold me! Someone get me a priest, I need to exorcise my computer. Children of the Corn, is that you? It’s like a demonic Brady Bunch waxwork!

See, something good did come out of the Secret Circle TV series - these abominable covers were taken off the shelves and people are spared further exposure


And a special prize of ugly goes to covers that are not only less than pleasant to the eyes - but just don’t even make any remote sense.






Like this. Is the Anita Blake series so typecast that we simply have to have a naked woman on the cover - the scales and unpleasant lighting just serves to add an extra sickliness to it. Does anyone even find this scaly torso sexy? Because it vaguely resembles a serial killer’s dismembered victim that is decomposing in oddly dry and scaly ground.





Now this picture isn’t ugly in the traditional sense per se - even with the unexplained backlighting or 
the fact that Merit - Merit of all people - is wearing skin tight vinyl. Revealing skin tight vinyl - how is this remotely reflective of the character?


No, this cover is included in the “just plain ugly” category for disturbing points - because the model they have to play Merit here (a graduate student, no less) looks to be about... 12? Maybe? 14 a the outside. In skin tight vinyl. Yes, I feel... unclean looking at this cover.



What why what? How does this cover relate to the book?  The checkerboard makes me dizzy. You don’t even get the slightest hint of what this book might be about.  Also, don’t we already have enough disembodied women on book covers?  A set of legs covered in checkerboard tells me that this book is about a woman with no torso.  Gee, that doesn’t sound like an exciting read.