Collection Reflection

For Best Covers part 1, click here . It has been a pretty darn good year for covers. Let's get to the rest of the list! It takes all the conventions from the urban fantasy book cover playbook (broody, pouting heroine plus weapon, plus posing) and elevates them. The background is outstanding. Looking at her sword arm, I was hoping she was part cyborg. Maybe she is. I need to read it to find out. I love everything about this cover (except maybe the overabundance of words on it.) It is gorgeously drawn. It is gorgeously colored. The details are perfect. You get a sense of her walking through the forest, with the movement of the leaves and her positioning. The lantern even looks like it might mid-swing. My favorite cover that looks like a movie poster. In fact, I am already in line to see this movie because it looks awesome. The detail on that cover is pretty impressive. Funniest cover: Every time I see this cover, it makes me laugh. Every single time. I hate zo...

After a year's worth of cover goodness (and badness), these are the ones that seem just as beautiful now as they did when I first saw them. When I looked back on the covers from this year, a lot that I had marked as wonderful had really lost a step or two when taking a second look. Maybe that is because taste can change over the course of a year, or maybe they shine less bright when compared to an entire year's worth of competition. As usual, these are only the things that caught MY eye this year, and I would love to hear your opinions on these, or any other covers that caught YOUR eye in 2012. When I saw this one, I could not stop staring at it. It is one of the most realistic post-apocalyptic scenes I've seen on a cover, and it works. If you look at it too long, it starts to look like the clouds are moving...that's your cue to go to the next book. I normally ignore reprints, because we often already have the book. That saves some time in my life. But, t...