Book Cover Smackdown! ‘Echo City’ vs. ‘The Water Wars’ vs. ‘Deathless’
By AidanMoher |
Saturday, February 5th, 2011 at
12:25 am
Grab your water bottles, gas masks and Lugers folks! It’s time for another Book Cover Smackdown!
Here are the contenders…
Your Mission (should you choose to accept it): Tell us which cover you like best and why.
Books shown here:
- Echo City by Tim Lebbon (Artist: Lee Gibbons)
- The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher (Artist: Unknown)
- Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente (Artist: Beth White Designer: Peter Lutjen)
NOTE: Bigger, better cover art images are available by clicking the images or title links.
Related posts:
- Book Cover Smackdown! ‘Echo City’ vs. ‘Halo: Cryptum’ vs. ‘Zoe’s Tale’
- Book Cover Smackdown! ‘Zoo City’ vs. ‘Plague Year’ (Czech) vs. Firedrake
- Book Cover Smackdown! Dragon Haven vs. The Infernal City vs. The Zeppelin Pulps
- Book Cover Smackdown! ‘The Blade Itself’ (Limited Ed.) vs. ‘Knife of Dreams’ vs. ‘The Habitation of the Blessed’
- Book Cover Smackdown! ‘The Map of All Things’ vs. ‘The Judging Eye’ vs. ‘Blood of the Mantis’
Tagged with: Book Cover Smackdown • Cameron Stracher • Catherynne M. Valente • Deathless • Echo City • The Water Wars • Tim Lebbon
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Not sure what it is about Water Wars, but neither of the other 2 titles get a look in, it just grabs my eye and keeps it. Very simple and elegant.
Echo City – When I look at the enlarged pic I am drawn to the beautiful detail in this cover, it makes me want to pick the book up and see what its about, intrinsically its more interesting than Water Wars just not as eye catching.
Deathless – Sorry just not my cup of tea. Too fussy and busy.
I really can’t decide which of the covers Echo City or Water Wars I prefer…. because when I look at one I decide its that until I check by looking at the other. Both are covers that have me itching to head down to my local bookshop and get my hands on these books.
Can’t say I like any of these covers. If I were to browse for a book at an airport or a bookstore, I probably wouldn’t even consider them. None of them give the impression of having fantasy/SF inside.
Deathless. Easily one of the best covers of the year so far.
All three are pretty good in their own way, but I think The Water War wins by a nose.
I like Echo City the best; the visual just immerses me in the world with the cityscape on the horizon and the sea of skulls in the foreground. I get the feeling of emptiness and alone-ness immediately, and the strange design on the skull intrigues me, makes me want to find out exactly what that’s about…
The Water Wars is nice too, makes want to figure out what exactly goes on in that book, but it doesn’t set my imagination into motion like the Echo City cover.
Deathless is nice graphic design, but it’s too flat and colorless for it to attract much of my attention.
I’d go with Deathless because it looks a little different than what you’d usually see.
Deathless is probably the best-designed cover of the three, and is the only one I would consider to be of truly fine quality. The image on Echo City is beautiful and if it weren’t over-designed with a poor (in my opinion) treatment of the author’s name, it would win, though it clearly looks like a department store novel or the kind of thing you’d see advertised on the subway.
Water wars looks ugly and stereotyped to my eye and the title treatment just doesn’t work.
Obviously, there are those who will disagree!
All three covers are interesting but only the Deathless cover prompted me to put the book on my wish list which, when it comes to book covers, is really the only criteria that matters. I can’t quite put my finger on why but the combination of its woodblock style, the vintage military staff car, distant horsemen and birds circling give it an ominous air that really appeals to me. Cory Doctorow’s blurb that it is “Romantic and blood-streaked, and infused with magic so real you can feel it on your fingertips” definitely added to the mystique of the cover.
On the Echo City cover the first thing that catches my eye is the pile of skulls at the forefront. This seems to tie to the title in a way that gets me asking a lot of questions: Is it the echo of past lives? The echo of masses somehow silenced? The echo of wars that have left the place dead? The echo brought on by silence now that many lives have been snuffed out? How did they die? Who are the silhouettes that remain alive? Did they do the killing, or are they the survivors? Or have they discovered this place? So many questions worth asking.
The Water Wars inspires really just one question: Why is her eye gushing water? While it’s a very beautiful and powerful image, it doesn’t seem to speak much to the content of the story, or draw me into the book in any way.
The cover for Deathless doesn’t inspire any questions, other than, “Why would I be interested in this book?” Just not gripping me at all.
I’ll go with Echo City as the best in this line up.
Echo City is easily the best.
Water Wars isn’t bad.
Deathless is terrible. I’m not interested at all.