Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4) by Patricia Briggs
One thing I’ve always liked about Anna, and, in some ways, why I prefer this series to the Mercy Thompson Series, is that she’s a character whose woo-woo is almost the anti-woo-woo. She’s the least werewolf-y werewolf there is; and that defines her. She’s not constantly worried about control or anger, she’s not always stalking around dominance games or hierarchy or hatred of witches or any such supernatural issues. She’s often effective simply because she comes in and dumps very-human normality over everything and forces her fellows wolves to do the same
Which is why I can’t even begin to agree with a cover which makes her look all feral and ominous. Charles, yes - walking slab of angsty sexy wolfy muscle, certainly. But I feel this cover kind of misses the entire point of who and what Anna is.
Change Anna’s clothes and her facial expression and I think it would work - the wolf, the lack of white-washing Charles, it would have been a lot better
Armageddon Rules (Grimm Agency #2) by J.C. Nelson
Ok… what… is happening here? Is it just me, or is that her butt and BACK below the breasts and then her chest above? Because that exposed “stomach” looks like a back. Her hips definite have her arse facing us. But she’s definitely facing us from the chest upwards. Is this the most extreme spine twist we’ve ever seen? Was the artist drunk? Is it an attempt to snark at spine twisty covers? Am I just hallucinating? Perhaps I am drunk? Perhaps I should be?
Dead but Not Forgotten
It’s a classic Sookie Stackhouse cover - and I think it kind of works. The series is finished, it’s over and this is a last gasp for it, a last bit of reminiscence for fans (or a last cynical money grab) so it needs a cover that draws upon that. It doesn’t need to depict anything within (a difficult to impossible task with an anthology, anyway) but it tells you exactly what it is to draw in fans - or warn them off
Legacy (Require: Cookie Short) by Grace McDermott
Sadly this doesn’t work for me at all. The story, with all its gritty world building wonderfulness has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. Yes it’s set in late December, but the same story could be transplanted to any time of year and still be pretty awesome. Christmas is the least relevant part of this book so why give it cover focus?
Operation Arcana Anthology
Yes, this is perfect.
Anthology covers are a pain - how do you draw up a cover to represent a dozen different stories with different world, different characters and different contexts? You can’t.
But you can produce something like this beauty that is evocative of the underlying theme. We have a modern military squad about to be eaten by a dragon (or, I guess, about to gun a dragon down). That’s the very essence of high fantasy magic vs modern military - and it’s the underlying key of this anthology: magic and military. Sure no story actually has soldiers hunting dragons (or being dragon food) but it’s still perfect
