Let’s all cheers to the last Snark of 2020!
Elyse: Here’s a kink I didn’t know existed
Tara: NO!
Wait, does that mean she’s the butcher AND the violin?
Elyse: It’s a complicated existence
Maya:
Sneezy: Must be NICE to goof off with EXPENSIVE SHIT YOU CAN’T HOLD PROPERLY!!!!!
(Seriously, what is that? Was he punching someone in the original photo?)
Catherine: Ooh, I don’t like that at all. He looks like he is trying to assassinate her with that cello bow.
Claudia: I’m with Sneezy — His bow hold is bothering me so much… Also, I had to squint to read the rest of the title, thought it was only “Rhapsody” in that tackiest and most overused font.
Amanda: But wait…he’s playing her like a cello but the cover references a violin.
Amanda: Is the Solar Warden a new vibrator?
Sneezy: Looks like a two ended one.
Susan: The Doctor called, she wants her sonic screwdriver back
Catherine: And between those comments, I’m never going to be able to look at the sonic screwdriver the same way again…
Elyse: The secret is it goes in your butt
From Anonymous
Sarah: When you consider that in many languages, the slang term for testicles translates as “eggs,” this is even more entertaining!
Amanda: Also, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen that biohazard naval tattoo before on a cover.
Elyse: Are those shorts or a towel draped across his lap?
Catherine: He looks like he is giving birth…
Tara: I thought he was sitting on the kid.
Sneezy: I’m all for everyone living their best life, and if contouring his boobs to the gods does it for him, great.
…but why did he choose to make his boobs look boxy?
And is it bothering anyone else how the background, the dude, and the baby all look like stickers pasted on top of each other???
From Meg: That baby clearly has jaundice and is sleeping in a space coconut.
Amanda: I, for one, would love to sleep in a space coconut, but can understand why it’d be getting a little warm for the baby.
Sarah: is unfiltered space light really good for lowering bilirubin?
CarrieS: Even allowing for the flexibility of babies, those are clearly an extra infant’s feet and I have questions and concerns.
Sneezy: …many, many questions and concerns. Including whether the baby is floating in space lava and why hasn’t someone gotten them out.
I object strongly to the first cover: not only is he pretending to play a cello, there aren’t enough strings whether she is supposed to be a cello or a violin!
Also, his bowhand appears to be too small.
Cover one: this cello isn’t tuning very well!
Cover two: does Ann summers sell these?
Cover three: I’ve got nothing, cluck cluck!
Cover four: I can’t stop thinking of that treehouse of horror episode when Maggie becomes a space Alien?
I just noticed the IT’S GETTING HOT baby has horns! Yikes!
Not only is his bow hold appalling, he’s holding it upside down.
That first cover is clearly copied from/inspired by Man Ray’s “Le Violon d’Ingres,” and…look, all I’m gonna say is that if a 1924 photomanip looks better and more realistic than your 2019 photomanip, you’re probably doing something wrong.
I laughed for about 5 minutes at the chick baby. The more I looked, the more ridiculous it was – the baby on the guy’s lap does look like a sticker, an incorrectly sized one at that! Since I’m a total bad cover whore, I looked up the book but it’s a no-go even for me. The blurb is so badly written, it’s excruciating: 21 one liners telling the entire book story. And I kid you not, a 4* comment was: “One of Jamie Knight’s best books that I’ve ever read but the editor didn’t even read the book. If you can get through the not edits, it’s a great book.” (!) Made me wonder if it was not the only Jamie Knight book she ever read.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist the blurb/comment snark, to go with the cover snark >.>)
The author’s name on Solar Warden is tripping me up—because of the background, it looks like Ian Dougla’s. And I was very confused.
(I think this may say something about me: “There’s a space vibrator floating on the cover, but, ohmygod, is that an ERRONEOUS APOSTROPHE!?”)
There is a shadow-y face and neck on hatched baby’s torso. Poor hatched baby…
@Arijo didn’t someone here mention how awful first person blurbs are? This is one of the worst! I feel like I need to take a deep breath every line. Also infuriating is any blurb that has to tell you that the book has no cheating on it, information like that should be in the description not a disclaimer at the end.
I also thought it was an Mpreg/omegaverse romance but maybe it’s just me?
As a current violin student, I too would like to raise objections to the guy on cover #1’s bow hand!
And what is he using for rosin? IS he using rosin? Because this whole situation seems like a fast route to fucking up that bow. Considering how much a decent bow costs (seriously you guys you can drop several hundred dollars on a bow EASY), this seems unwise!
Also, does she sit there singing the tones at him? What if he hits double stops? Does she have to do throat singing? How is this supposed to work?
SO MANY QUESTIONS. :O
I am less concerned about the ostensible space vibrator than I am about the ova it has clandestinely collected and is spilling all over the universe. Aside from the mess, who knows what the result of that will be.
Hot Baby may be one of those results. Either that or it has been set adrift in its space coconut seeking rescue, like Kal-El or Space Baby Moses. It’s obviously got a bad connection on its headset and is having trouble making out the coordinates it should be aiming for.
I actually looked up the first cover, getting excited about a pairing of a violin player and a butcher…only to discover it’s a Mafia romance.
Not my cup of tea. Nevermind.
OMG, all of these covers are horribly fantastic. But the woman in the first cover really needs to see a doctor. Her lines are not straight and, well, there’s just too many bad things happening.
And the chick baby looks like it has abs. Now come on.
@Varian Ross: SAME. Though if it was the dude who was the violinist (as semi-implied by the cover) and the lady the mafia “butcher”…I mean, I’d at least give that a try out of curiosity!
Slightly o/t (and I haven’t touched a violin since 4th grade when I could barely screech out “Rueben & Rachel”), but Skye Warren’s North Security trilogy (OVERTURE, CONCERTO, SONATA) features a violinist heroine—but not a butcher hero, alas, although he is a security specialist and he does kill a lot of people (all bad guys, of course).
Are her curls drawn on in the first one too? Is he a violinist and a serial killer? I have so many questions.
I hear/read “it’s getting hot” and my brain automatically finishes the sentence in the key of Nelly- “…in here, so take of all your clothes.” Let’s just say I could do without the juxtaposition of those lyrics and the space coconut baby.
I fell down a rabbit hole of Hannibal (the NBC series) fan fiction last night, and as a consequence the first cover hit my eyeballs like a thousand bricks of OH NO. The sideline that mentioned a “butcher” was not reassuring either. If you haven’t seen Hannibal, let’s just say there’s an unfortunate incident involving a cello…and a person….and a person-cello. We’ll leave it at that.
<EmilyLitellaVoice>: I just don’t understand all these objections to violins on book covers! How are marketing staffers going to understand culture if they’re never exposed to violins?
Oh. Not violins. Not even violence, but cellos-that-can’t-possibly-exist-or-make-an-in-tune-sound-if-they-did.
That’s different. Never mind.
@Kit: you’re right! It was in a Books on sale post. If I remember correctly, the bitchery concluded present tense first person blurbs never tell anything about the story and are, therefore, lazy writing.
If it’s mpreg or omegaverse, the hints completely flew by me o.0 I also have to point it out: it’s true present tense first person blurb never tells anything! Here we are, with no idea if the story is m/m or m/f, or omegaverse.
Allow me to show my age.
Cover #1? Perhaps his bowing problems are due to the fact that she blinded him with science.
The baby’s hand position is saying: Oh, my God, no! Perhaps the baby is in a heated relaxation pod, but someone turned the heat too high?
@DonnaMarie, Thomas Dolby is a professor at Hopkins! He’s the Director of New Media at the Peabody Institute of JHU. He still occasionally plays publicly.
Thank you for closing out this sh*tstorm of a year with some quality cover snark. It’s nice to know we can always count on SBTB, even in times of pandemic.
Re the first cover, he’s clearly “playing her”, but it appears as though there are “no strings attached”.
I know, lame…sorry. I couldn’t resist.