Welcome back to Cover Snark! Let’s look at some weird ones.
From Delight: “Please enjoy this image that has traumatized our little girl group.”
Sarah: I don’t know if enjoy is the right word but I can’t look away, that is for certain.
Elyse: I am not okay.
His head is in the other dude’s body cavity. I can’t see it any other way.
Tara: Did we do this one before? For sure we did something at least similar
Sarah: I have some physiology questions. If one has four arms and clearly two sets of pectorals, how does one work out to make sure the pectorals develop at the same rate? How many lungs are there? What’s this person’s air capacity? Are they very very buoyant?
I imagine they have an unfair advantage on a swim team, but that’s just a guess.
Tara: I think this might be one of the product lines at the torso factory.
Sarah: What, weight machines for four-arms, four-pecs?
Shana: I can’t even look at this, my whole body just flinches away in horror.
Sarah: But Shana imagine how useful that person would be for household renovations.
Two hands hold the level and the hammer, two hold the picture… Hanging art would be a breeze
Maya: It’s like one twin tried to eat the other but didn’t quite make it all the way
Claudia: Ok, we have Centipede, Book 2 features Earthworm or James.
AJ: We did do a similar one before but this one is somehow WORSE. I think it’s the lack of head. Or the hand caressing his lower pec.
Sneezy: One of my FAVOURITE hentai mangaka drew a HAWT four armed snake man. This isn’t him.
From Kristi: For your cover snark consideration…
There are 4 of these books and each of them feature a strategically placed glowing “W” in the title. So hard to choose but the pose in this one seems more “Zoolander” than alien warrior.
Sneezy: Reminds me of that pastry decorating thing where you run a toothpick through stripes.
Amanda: I thought he had no nipple, but you really have to squint to find it.
Sarah: I did not expect to go nipple hunting today, but here we are.
Shana: This is the perfect dude for annoying people who say, “I don’t see color, I don’t notice if you’re Black, orange, or purple.” Let’s see how they do when pretending not to see a stripey orange guy.
AJ: His nipple is well evolved to adapt to its environment and hide from predators. Also, Nipple Predators would be a great name for a band.
From Lace: So this isn’t a typical Cover Snark rec, but I’ve polled three people, and we’re all too anxious for the characters’ safety to find this cover fun or breezy.
Sarah: Is it also the bookshop of forgotten gravity?
The Bookshop of Forgotten OSHA, too, probably.
Lara: That cover just reinforces that I will never be whimsical. Just perched atop a pile of books at an impossible angle? No, thank you.
Sneezy: Of course you’re full of whimsy, Lara! You’re just sensible.
Amanda: I think we can all agree that man is not lying on that couch.
Elyse: And his pelvis isn’t attached correctly.
Lara: It might be that we’re looking at a photo of a spliced human and a furniture catalog. That sounds like an alien romance plot…
Sarah: He’s a really big DILL?! Apparently!
Shana: Does this book come with pickles?
AJ: My friend has a theory that in every relationship there is the One who Likes Pickles and the One who Does Not Like Pickles, and they maintain the balance of their love via the sacred exchange of pickles. I endorse this theory, because it gets me extra pickles.
However, I do not endorse this cover. This man is too excited to share his pickle. I do not like it.
Sneezy: But AJ! If both partners love pickles then that justifies buying MOAR pickles! And let’s keep talking about pickles forever and ever and not look at mannequin man EVER AGAIN!
Can we have a cover snark special of misleading book covers? The ones that hint at one genre but totally miss the mark. I’m requesting this because I’ve seen a book that I DNF’d that had a cover change that hints at a delightful romp in space but the story is actually a serious space opera where essentially the women are forced to marry, change their religion and are assaulted. I believe that @DiscoDollyDeb also mentioned an illustrated cover that misfired spectacularly (iirc it was about some sort of mafia family and their dark secrets but the cover was reminiscent of the Brady Bunch).
As usual a terrible assortment of Photoshop fails except the bookshop one, I just want to send health and safety in!
I glanced at the front page of the site, and even the barest glimpse of the thumbnail of that first one made me say “OH no.” That’s a full tufted leather sofa of dehydrated musculature. Is he 8 feet tall, or is everything proportionately smaller to fit into the optimal hero height of “just over 6 feet”? He’s cut off at the hips, so he could very well be stacked atop another pelvis, as well. Is he made of Space Legos and you can capriciously snap on as many parts as you want? The possibilities are endless.
And, as always, weird arm configuration has taken my brain on the journey to “How do centaurs masturbate?”, so I am ready for anything Monday throws at me.
@Kit: that was Lexi Blake’s TAGGART FAMILY VALUES, a collection of short stories that is part of her Masters & Mercenaries series of BDSM/suspense romances. When the MCs aren’t participating in scenes at a members-only club, they’re exchanging massive amounts of fire power with bad guys. So, of course, the cover features illustrated cartoons of the two (married) MCs and their children. WTF? indeed!
The first cover is disturbing on every single level I can think of and yet I keep looking at it.
I have no words. I should not have looked at this first thing on a Monday morning. I am now grabbing a bottle of whatever liquor falls out first, retreating to bed and pulling the covers over my head. It has to be 5 o’clock somewhere in the world, right?
The alien warrior is missing half of his head? Like, he has a chin but they have forgotten that heads also have cheeks and ears? Clearly should have been called Shrunken Head Alien Warrior.
Also, #1 reminds me of when I copy paste something in PowerPoint and it just drops the second copy overlapping the first. Drag and drop, people!
That first cover ppicture is bad, but he’s one of the “Gladiators of the Vagabond”. Does a vagabbond have multiple gladiators? What kind of vagabonds do they have in space? What kind of gladiators do they have in space come to that? I need to know!
Sorry for typos, blame the painkillers.
That first one is so terrifying I immediately shared with my teen, who plans to share it with everyone she knows. All I can think of is that old Cootie game and it feels like the Cooties got stacked together the wrong way (this link takes you to a picture of the Cootie game and its parts https://www.pinterest.com/pin/80s-childhood-memories–71846556525427146/). That’s just something you can’t unsee
All of these are like toys put together incorrectly.
1: Two torsos, many nightmares
2: Head smushed down too far on Barbie’s neck
3: Falling over real soon
4: Legs from a different doll
Gladiator’s Sanctuary: In the perennial category of “I was so distracted by the A, I almost overlooked the B”, I almost failed to notice that the Obligatory Nipples are next to the lower set of arms, while the upper set has been airbrushed out. Are we dealing here with a Special Needs Gladiator Sanctuary, like the ones for unadoptable cats?
Galaxy Games / Alien Warrior / Unclaimed: Someone help me out, please. Which part is series title, which part is individual book?
:: pause to wonder what minute, fleeting achievement entitles one to a “{periodical title} best-selling author” blurb ::
The Book Shop of Forgotten Dreams: Aaand . . . we have a crossover, because this snub of the laws of physics is also adorable enough for Cover Awe.
Big Pickle: Plot twist: The author was thinking along the lines of “We’re really in a pickle now–a big pickle” but nobody explained this to the illustrator, leading to hideously mixed messages.
All I kept wondering for the first cover was if both sets of arms sweat and does he need to apply deodorant to both sets?
@Lena Brassard: And now I wonder how centaurs masturbate too…Thanks 🙂
The torso on the Alien Warrior keeps making me think of brioche knitting. Gonna have to change around my Ravelry queue and avoid my next brioche project for a bit.
Look we all know that Big Pickle should be a hallmark pickle movie.
He runs a small local pickle shop when the Big Pickle company comes in with its beautiful CEO who loathes pickles and reluctantly inherited the pickle empire from her family.
It’s up to Dill to woo her with homemade pickles, and show her a good pickle isn’t hard to find, teaching her the magic of pickling
Along with everything else, the Gladiator’s upper left arm is too short. Looks like they chopped out the middle portion, including the elbow, and then reattached the bottom part to the top. No bending that arm.
My husband has a hat shaped like a turkey (ready for roasting). Yes, I got it as a joke, but he actually wears it sometimes because it’s really warm. And I think the Alien Warrior is wearing a similar hat but it’s a torso.
@Sneezy: A friend of mine wrote a song called Mannequin Man. I *think* you can listen to it here:
https://suefink.bandcamp.com/track/mannequin-man?action=download
Also, the first cover: is his esophagus really long to reach the stomach that must be far, far away? Why do I care? And … never mind.
For that first one all I could think of was some of the more obscure D&D monsters. “Please roll a D20 against attack by the torsosaurus. Too bad, you failed your save and the torsosaurus is now eating your head.”
Mr Pickle’s lower half seems to have been imported from a grey-scale cartoon, a la the video for A-Ha’s song Take On Me from the 80s!
Gladiator’s Sanctuary – I’ve heard of your head up your ass, but never your torso
#2 – In all my years of romance reading, a hero that’s a sci fi non tiger tony the tiger wasn’t it.
#3 I 10000% agree with the OSHA comments. I cringe.
4 – I just have no response to his big dill.
It’s National Pickle Day! For real.
Lol – I read Big Pickle on KU, and @Amanda L. Is not too far off. It is a chain deli known for its pickles, and she essentially runs the local shop. He’s the son of the CEO sent to figure out why the local shop is under performing and also get his act together. I’d say solid C – not bad, but ultimately forgettable.