Hi there! You know what you need? Some Cover Snark! As always, please don’t read while drinking your morning coffee or inhaling a croissant.
From She-Kilian: “What the hell is going on? Is this some new medical treatment? Or some new weight-loss technique to burn off the love handles? Where is that fire coming from?”
Redheadedgirl: Isn’t that much definition on the abs a sign of dehydration?
Sarah: When the burning, itching, and soreness flare up… actually I don’t have anything that can help with that.
Amanda: Is the dragon true to size?
Redheadedgirl: He’s just really far away?
CarrieS: I hope the dragon heals him soon. That guy has a serious medical problem.
From A: “I can’t tell if this is an album cover for a band consisting of a rat, a kitten, and a shirtless tenor saxophone player. Or a picture of a man and his imaginary pets –don’t listen to the kitten man, he does not have your best interests at heart.”
Redheadedgirl: Feral Dust Bunnies is my new pub trivia team name.
Amanda: I picture the rat and kitten as like the devil and angel on this dude’s shoulder.
Sarah: That skyline is only a little suggestive. Just a bit.
CarrieS: Are the dust bunnies in his pants?
Redheadedgirl: What are we having all of? Frostbite?
Elyse: While I admire the knitted fingerless gloves…it’s time to see a doctor/
“A novel about love and Renaud’s Phenomenon.”
Redheadedgirl: I go with fingerless gloves as much as I can, but once it hits about… 20? 15? I switch to my convertible mittens.
CarrieS: Yeah, those look like chilblains and/or advanced frostbite to me. It’s disturbing. Either that or I’m misreading the color and his hands are stained with blood which is also disturbing.
Elyse: There’s no way this is a good situation.
Redheadedgirl: No.
Unless that’s the heroine’s hands stained with the blood of her enemies.
CarrieS: You can tell his fingers hurt from how he’s holding them. It’s genuinely upsetting me.
CarrieS: When athlete’s foot runs wild.
Fungus Friends.
Amanda: Girl, do not get your face anywhere near those green spikes. Also, his head looks photoshopped right where the green necklace meets his collarbone, like some weird retelling of that Green Ribbon story.
Sarah: I think there are some soaps on Etsy that can help with the skin geodes. Maybe.
Re Searing healing by a dragon:
WELL.That gives new meaning to firestick farming . Firespitting manscaping ?
I think the dragon is healing him by breathing flames on him, which I would be wary of as a procedure, unless I was certain a)I was in a romance novel and b)the dragon was in the description as my true love. Even then, I think I’d suspect I was going to be lunch.
The guy on the last cover looks really disinterest. Especially, since it looks like she’s digging her nails into him pretty hard.
@Lostshadows: I think you’re right. He probably asked her to rub his shoulders and her reply was, “Ha. No.” He’s not impressed with the compromise, it seems.
That one rat in the lower corner of the Feral Dust Bunnies cover looks as worryingly mesmerized with the guy’s nether regions as the dude himself does. But the poor kitten looks like it’s already seriously over this shit. Someone rescue the tender kitten!
What Susan said. Someone please rescue that kitten!
According to the Mayo Clinic “Raynaud’s (ray-NOHZ) disease causes some areas of your body — such as your fingers and toes — to feel numb and cold in response to cold temperatures or stress. In Raynaud’s disease, smaller arteries that supply blood to your skin narrow, limiting blood circulation to affected areas (vasospasm).” So, Raynaud’s affects the sense of touch. And To Have it All is a romance. Hmmmmmm. Just looking at the picture makes my arthritic fingers hurt this chilly morning.
Those frostbite hands have already lost part of an index finger. Ouch!
I swear, given the headline about fungus and that first cover, I thought the guy was being sprayed for jock itch. Can miniature dragons breath Tinactin?
The Feral Dustbunnies book was actually really good, though, if I recall correctly. One of my favorite reads of the last few months.
Re Draconicalb topography:
From Uncanny Valley to Uncanny Rocky Mountains.
Kinda sexist, the way her scales are more discreet. That’s not the way scaly skin conditions work, in my experience. Biodiverse yes, gendered no.
I have to say that the cover art for Feral Dust Bunnies looks so wackadoodle that I’m super tempted to read it. #LOL
Why not go all out, and call it Dracohones?
“Are the dust bunnies in his pants?”
*snicker*
@Ann that is a question for the ages.
I mean it appears we are dealing with dragon shifters here. Dragons, being reptiles (?), do not have cojones. So does a dragon shifter lose his cojones, or do they turn into scaly dragon cojones?
NEED TO KNOW.
@Christine – agreed! Angel Martinez is an auto-buy for me, and this book (and series) is full-on adorable.
Healed by the Dragon: I shudder to think what needs healing **there***.
Feral Dust Bunnies: that cover made so little sense to me that I looked the book up and I can’t say the description helped. No mention of a rat or how the dust bunnies turned feral, and what does this mean? “Jason’s scent is so delicious that Wolf has a difficult time humaning around him.” What is “humaning?” When did “human” obtain a gerund?
To Have It All: I think those fingers have blood and bruises from hitting someone. Although three fingers of his right hand are broken, he won the bout. We know this because he is proudly twitching his tie.
Dracones: Before I even noticed the scary green spikes I was wondering if ‘dracones” is related to “cajones,” Spanish for “testicles.” Then I noticed the green spikes. I can only hope he can turn them off and on at will because it looks to me as if it would be all too easy to get one in the carotid artery or the jugular and bleed out.
Actually, Jayne Castle (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) does write about feral dust bunnies. And you really don’t want them in your pants.
At first glance, I thought the Dust Bunny guy was suffering an eye irritation caused by a failure to keep house properly. Then I saw the details and the tag line and now I have no idea.
@roserita, those dust bunnies seem fairly domesticated to me what with dressing like Elvis, carrying purses, etc. Certainly not feral as in wild and untamed.
Still puzzled by “humaning.”
No, he’s just happy to see you.
Having had pet rats for many years (the last one died about a year ago) I am inclined to say that the kitten is thinking: Maybe if I stay very, very still, the rat won’t notice that I am in her territory and chase me away.
Oh, that’s characteristic of any non-WASP in visual media, whether non-human aliens on TV, non-European foreigners in an old movie, or God-knows-what on a book cover. The male is always more exotic-looking. I’ll bet he speaks with a stronger accent too.
@Louise. If that’s the effect they’re after (“exotic” + sexual dimorphism), it is pure projection. On multiple levels.
The cover models are of Caucasian appearance, even though dragons/draconical mythical beasts appear in so many mythologies across cultures. So, the scales can only offer a mighty thin veneer of ‘exoticism’. (I guess that’s all they want, though, that sort of “icing on the hotcake”?)
And…it’s that extra little bit hilarious to me, because I’m aware that, while the HUMAN scaly skin conditions are (also) totally ‘cross-cultural’ / not racially linked, the study of them has historically been and seems still to be heavily Western-Europe based.
I LOVE the Offbeat Crimes series, and Feral Dust Bunnies was really good — although the cover doesn’t seem very relevant. I mean, there is an important Plot Kitten but I don’t recall a whole lot of rats? And what are those things around his wrists, because they look painful? Thank goodness for Kindle books where I pay absolutely no attention to the covers, because I might have missed an adorable story!
Also @Louise’s observation led me to look deeper into a side issue:
@Sarah. People have made comments like that about my real-life patches of scaly skin. (And I have, from memory, the most common variety.) They’re inaccurate.
Scaly skin frays at the edges ie where it meets the ‘normal’ skin, so THE major feature of my skincare regime is bandaids…and moisturizer is supposed to be in there (my scaled family swears by paw paw cream) to help resist wear and tear from the weather, but I’m pretty lazy about that part. (Not quite “To Have It All” (including chilblains) level careless, but getting there.)
By contrast, abrasive (I assume) soaps would seep into the ‘cracks’ / the frayed edges and cause agony. To be fair though, abrasive action IS required in some places. I do grow some sharp edges that saw into delicate flesh next door. But I find a pumice stone the best tool for the job of shaping/smoothing ‘scales’.
Full disclosure: what I’d really like to do here is do some joshing in the form of weird ridiculous baseless ambit claims.
Viz: ‘We know you like dragons, Sarah. You’re just pretending to think spiny skin is unsightly because you’re jealous.’
(That would be the applicable variation on the ‘you are just jealous of my built-in features’ defense, an idea I got from unscaled relatives who really do think it’s cool and convenient.)
Hmmm… Just checked Amazon and there is quite a series of these Dracones books with men with spiked shoulders.
The first one in the series features a man with blue spikes and is 99 cents
https://www.amazon.com/Dracones-Awakening-Book-One-Shifter-ebook/dp/B01B5BJLZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505230626&sr=8-1&keywords=Dracones
Dracones Betrayed has more green spikes and a woman with the strangest wings I’ve ever seen<
https://www.amazon.com/Dracones-Betrayed-Dark-Dragon-Shifter-ebook/dp/B01M64L6FM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1505230626&sr=8-3&keywords=Dracones
it’s entertaining just reading the comments.
I know everyone’s tired of the missing heads, but how can you even have a romance if the hero disappears below the waist?
Dickarys!
That dragon is saying ‘kill it with fire!’.
Reviews indicate that the Feral Dust Bunnies are set up to be an ongoing plot point. Y’all.
I thought the hands on to have it all belonged to a homeless guy? They seem more dirty than bloody to me.