The cover art conundrum

[jmc_bks]

There is a great deal of cover art out there that doesn't make sense: cover models with the wrong hair/eye color; cover models wearing the wrong period clothes, or engaged in activities that are either not in the book or don't suit the content; even cover models with extra limbs!  There are book covers using classical images in a sort of generic way.  And then there are the covers that are abstract, unpeopled.  There are so many ways that book cover design can go wrong.  The art department walks a tightrope, trying to match content to an image that will catch the eye of casual book browsers, getting them to open the book and become interested enough to pay to read it.

This cover art is lovely. The colors, the shading, the cover model, all gorgeous. It fits the plot and setting of the novel. The cover model looks, ethnically speaking, like the narrator/protagonist of the series, and her tattoos, which change with each book to suit the content, are gorgeous too. But the pose and wardrobe don't really match the narrator's character. Although she is comfortable within her own skin, human and coyote, she has experienced things in earlier books that left her conscious of nudity and how much skin others can see.  

I know the author really likes the cover art, and a lot of readers do, too. And I even like it, too, when I disassociate it from the character it is supposed to represent.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here, other than this cover art, however beautiful it is, bothers me.

Comments

[kate rothwell (from livejournal.com)]

There was one mark from the river monster but that's it. And doesn't it eventually get erased?

I don't think of Mercy as quite that stacked.She mentions going bra-less a few times and that woman would be uncomfortable if she did.

I don't like is the come hither look. The one thing I like about that character is that she doesn't go looking for trouble -- it comes to her. That's a BRING IT ON sort of a posture.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hadn't thought about the bring it on posture, but you're right. The physique, yes, that too, although I tend to ignore that, since UF heroines seem to be stacked generally. (Frex, Kate Daniels' chest seems to be getting larger on those covers.)

I thought Coyote erased on the mark around her waist and then the other one disappeared when she killed the river devil.