It seems like we’re always making fun of horrible book covers, so now let’s take some time to praise some great cover art. We’ll make this a regular feature.
To narrow down the results, for this contest, let’s choose covers that have been published within the last five years. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Full Fathom Five artist: Chris McGrath
The Lady of the Lake artists: Bartlomiej Gawel & Pawel Brudniak (design by Lauren Panepinto)
What are some of your recent favorites? Please name the artist if you know who it is.
Our blog software won’t allow you to upload images, so you can either link to the cover somewhere on the internet (e.g., Amazon) or, try using this code with the URL of the image between the quotation marks:
<img src=”URL goes here”>
If this doesn’t work (the blog is trying to protect us from unscrupulous commenters’ images), I’ll fix it for you. Also, please note that the URLs may cause your comment to go into moderation before it appears (spam detector, you know). I’ll approve it soon.
As always, we’ll choose one commenter to win a book from our stacks.
To start things off:
This is a fun one. I’m super picky about book covers. Most of them are just meh for me and 3/4 of the rest are terrible in some way or another. But covers are so important. There have been books I avoided because of the terrible covers (that I later read due to urging from a friend) that were excellent and that I never would have read. There have been books I’ve looked into just because I liked the cover. Sometimes that doesn’t translate into a book I enjoy but most of the time it works out.
Some of my favorites are those that aren’t photographs but painted/digital artwork created just for that book. I like these because in general they show either a scene from the book or the characters in action. Two good examples of this are:
I don’t know the artist though, the Amazon description doesn’t include it (though it should!).
and
I don’t know this artist either but it looks familiar.
Others are more stylized like:
This one is an example of gorgeous artwork that made me read the story but I ended up liking the cover better than the story:
And one of my all time favorites because I’m partial to dragons is:
Tommy Arnold does the cover for The Guns Above, he also did A Taste of Honey and recently he did The Armored Saint.
Oh, yeah, I LOVE the A Taste of Honey cover!
I really enjoy the Stormlight covers by Michael Whelan.
Or see prints at: http://www.michaelwhelan.com/shop/stormlight-set-of-3-covers/
I know it’s not actually out yet but I like the cover from Christopher Moore’s new book Noir.
It’s brand-new, but “Unearthed” has a great cover!
One of my recent favorites, though I unfortunately couldn’t find the artist
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51QyN3b0qvL.jpg
You guys did a great job of showing the covers for us! Thank you!
You’re welcome! This is a fun topic and I love looking at the covers that everyone submits.
Pretty much all of Victo Ngai’s covers:
Here’s my favorite:
with an honorable mention to this upcoming sequel to The Armored Saint:
I love that Adrian Tchaikovsky cover and it made me pick up the book too.
Thank you for sharing, Kristi!
I think Tricks for Free by Seanan McGuire has an awesome cover……definitely need more badass women characters!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/qK9aSXkty638LtIa2
Kathy, if you live in the USA, you win a book of your choice from our stacks.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!
Oh no! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was US only. I think another person needs to be picked.
Well, darn, Kathy! We’ll let random.org pick another winner.
John Smith, luck’s running your way! If you live in the USA, you win a book of your choice from our stacks.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!