LJS Books

Aug 20

Round 3 of the audio book cover smackdown commences now! On tap: Spellbinder (or Enchantress) Where to start? As in The Secret Circle, Spellbinder deals with the “good witch/bad witch” dynamic. The “good witch” is blond and fair-skinned (Diana, Thea, Hellewise), gentle and kind, and would never use her powers for evil. The “bad witch” generally has black or otherwise dark hair (Faye, Blaise, Maya), is cunning and often cruel, and isn’t above twisting rules and morality to get her way. At the risk of sounding like the Old Spice guy, look at the picture. Now read the description. Back to the picture. And back to me. The lighter-haired girl here looks nothing like Thea; judging from the expressions, she looks like she’s meant to be “the bad one”. The dark-haired one looks nothing like Blaise; going from the more gentle look in her eyes, I’d say she’s meant to be “the good one”. So they got the characters switched around. That seems to happen quite frequently with cover artists. Surely if the artists don’t have time to read the book, someone could give them a fly-by list detailing major characteristics? Onward. “Light Girl” is wearing some bling that would make Mr. T jealous. Together, she and “Dark Girl” look like they’re going to a figure skating competition or something. I would say an 80s grad, but in retrospect, my sister’s high school grad was in the 80s so I have a vague idea of what they looked like—and let me tell you, young hipster wannabes, it was nothing like you see on TV, okay? I could go on and on, but it really all comes back to the same problem ever time: The characters look nothing like they’re described. These are YA books; they don’t take a month to read. I’m sure an artist could take the time to read the novel to get a sense of what the character looks like. If that’s not feasible, there are more than enough reliable fan-made character databases around that they could easily consult. Simply put, there’s no logical excuse for consistently failing to represent the characters properly. Cover taken from the LJS cover resource; click to enlarge.

Round 3 of the audio book cover smackdown commences now! On tap: Spellbinder (or Enchantress)

Where to start? As in The Secret Circle, Spellbinder deals with the “good witch/bad witch” dynamic. The “good witch” is blond and fair-skinned (Diana, Thea, Hellewise), gentle and kind, and would never use her powers for evil. The “bad witch” generally has black or otherwise dark hair (Faye, Blaise, Maya), is cunning and often cruel, and isn’t above twisting rules and morality to get her way.

At the risk of sounding like the Old Spice guy, look at the picture. Now read the description. Back to the picture. And back to me. The lighter-haired girl here looks nothing like Thea; judging from the expressions, she looks like she’s meant to be “the bad one”. The dark-haired one looks nothing like Blaise; going from the more gentle look in her eyes, I’d say she’s meant to be “the good one”. So they got the characters switched around. That seems to happen quite frequently with cover artists. Surely if the artists don’t have time to read the book, someone could give them a fly-by list detailing major characteristics?

Onward. “Light Girl” is wearing some bling that would make Mr. T jealous. Together, she and “Dark Girl” look like they’re going to a figure skating competition or something. I would say an 80s grad, but in retrospect, my sister’s high school grad was in the 80s so I have a vague idea of what they looked like—and let me tell you, young hipster wannabes, it was nothing like you see on TV, okay?

I could go on and on, but it really all comes back to the same problem ever time: The characters look nothing like they’re described. These are YA books; they don’t take a month to read. I’m sure an artist could take the time to read the novel to get a sense of what the character looks like. If that’s not feasible, there are more than enough reliable fan-made character databases around that they could easily consult. Simply put, there’s no logical excuse for consistently failing to represent the characters properly.

Cover taken from the LJS cover resource; click to enlarge.

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