Happy Halloween Week! All week I will be featuring spooky books to give you the shivers and that make great read-a-likes for my favorite spooky book, The Diviners. So I thought I would start things off with a Diviners cover round-up. (Hence the bad pun) I haven't featured a cover round-up in a while and thought this would be a nice way to introduce this week's theme and have a little fun.
These are four alternate covers in America that I pulled off Goodreads. These covers have been used for paperback editions, e-books, and audiobooks. I love the black cover, very mysterious. I like the blue covers too, but prefer the bottom right since it looks more gilded and art deco. I'm not a fan of the purple cover, which is problematic. You'll see why in a minute.
These are some international translations. From left to right they are Polish, Portuguese, and Italian. I'm terrible with languages. My original guesses were Polish, Greek, and Spanish, but my inability to speak or read anything other than English is not the point here. My favorite cover of these is definitely the Italian cover. It really captures the setting, but maybe not the paranormal plot.
All this is a build-up for the book two cover reveal, Lair of Dreams, out August 5, 2014. (Although the publication date has already been pushed back twice).
Goodreads is not happy. I'm not sure what this book is representing. I'm getting a little jazz age, if I squint my eyes and tilt my head, but mostly, I feel like I'm looking at an old Artemis Fowl book. Of course this cover plays off the purple paperback cover, but I'm still not seeing the logic.
I understand that the book packagers want to give a cohesive look to the series, but gilded age time-travelers does not seem to be the right message. I also think something along the lines of any of the other covers would give more mass market appeal, not to mention cross over appeal. This looks like cheap sci-fi and that's not at all what's between the covers. The book doesn't come out until August, so there plenty of time for a cover recall. Can we vote? Redesign it to look more like the gilded blue cover? Just give it a mysterious straight black cover with the title in glitter? Or just a brown paper bag?
The cover doesn't matter so much to me anyway. I'll either read it on my Kindle (no cover required), buy it in hardcover (those dust jackets slip right off--that sounds a little naughty!), or interlibrary loaned with a big due date wrapper covering half the jacket anyway. But I fear that this tripped out cover will send new readers running.
Any thoughts on the cover? Good, bad, what were they thinking? Rest assured that the books I have to share this week all have alluring and spooky covers that are sure to delight!
Happy Reading!
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