Cover Snark: Weapons Are A Girl's Best Friend

So this week we’re going to look at that most essential of accessories - weapons. Yes the shiny killy things. After all, so many of the protagonists in our series are fighting for their lives against the very worst that the magical world can throw at them, it’s reasonable that these people should be carrying something to keep them safe.

Unfortunately, even this simple necessity can be done so very... oddly.

Now this cover is actually several kinds of shiny... buuut, what does she actually intend to do with that sword? At the moment it seems to be mistaken for a handbag. This is my long sword by Gucci, isn’t it fabulous? While few action poses work well on these covers - all too often they’re an excuse to display T&A. But actually holding it as a weapon would be nice - a bit less dainty.

Mind Games by Carolyn Crane, Book 1 of the Disillusionist Trilogy

Justine is a hypochondriac in a downward spiral, her life falling apart as her anxiety and panic attacks take over. Until she meets Packard, a man who can turn her whole life around.

A highcap psychic, he can see her problems and more, he has a solution. By teaching her to zing her fears into other people, she can be free from her crushing dread and panic for the first time. While it offers her freedom and peace, it comes with a price, acting as a vigilante with her fellow disillusionists, all zinging their emotions and problems into other people’s brains – psychologically destroying them.

While their targets are untouchable criminals, Justine has to deal with her new life as a vigilante, keep what she wishes to preserve of her own life – and decide whether she even wants it any more – and come to terms with the new control Packard has over her – for without the ability to zing she would be even more vulnerable than she was before.

And then there’s a target she doesn’t agree with and things aren’t entirely what they see; against a backdrop of a spiralling crime rate as unpoliced psychics use their abilities without check – and people driven by desperation to try and bring some stability to the city.

This book surprised me from beginning to end. It’s complicated, it’s nuanced and you never reach a point where you can sit down and say “these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.” It’s never that simple and no-one is that clean. We’re hit from all sides with a barrage of questions and things to think about – the question of vigilantism? Even when it works? What about imprisonment, what about cruel imprisonment, what about when there’s no alternatives and what about when it cannot last? And dependence, even when the alternative is death – and deception that ends up with people becoming utterly helpless minions – but, again, the alternative is death and the deception itself is an act of desperation from a man in an intolerable situation. For that matter, the issues of those who know they are entering minionhood comes into it – especially when you consider the alternative is not far off death, so what choice is it? We even look at the extra toll it has on the black disillusionists who have become helpless minions of a white man. And how far does the end justify the means?

And we meet the ultimate target and he’s evil... but he’s not, the boss man’s evil, no, wait, both of them have engaged in shitty behaviour but both of them had damn good (or, at very least, idealistic reasons for doing so).