Mini Anita Blake book rant ahead - feel free to skip
I love the first nine Anita Blake books. I really really do, and I love the old Ace covers that featured the St. Louis sky line or bloody paw prints under a full moon or ancient grave stones in a deserted cemetery. They made sense, they were linked to the story, and they were often times very expressive pieces of art. They gave you a preview of the story without giving anything away, dark and mysterious just like the words that filled the pages between them.
The new covers? Make absolutely no sense what so ever. What the hell do naked ladies have to do with anything!? What? Can someone answered this for me? Every friggin cover of the Jove editions features some discretely unrevealing part of female autonomy in the foreground with maybe, *maybe* some small, transparent, easy to ignore image of a wolf or a butterfly or some other entirely small and insignificant reference to the actual story taking place between the covers in the background. The closest any of the covers of the four books I have get to actually giving you an important detail about the story is the one on Circus of the Damned, which has a picture of a cobra on it (a cobra which, by the way, is 'drawn' on the side of one of the aforementioned naked ladies). It's an easy to see reference to Oliver's animal to call, and snakes are, in fact, rather important through out the whole book. However, in Lunatic Cafe? I didn't even *see* the wolf image in the corner until I read the little "this is what other well known authors/magazines have to say about this book" quote new books tend to have that was printed right below it, and even then I didn't notice anything until I saw a weird, out of place spot on the moon that looked kinda like an eye.
Now, tell me... What the hell do naked ladies have to do with the story? Usually the only naked bodies we see in these books (at least until the later ones) are the murder victims Anita is called into investigate, yes? With maybe the occasional "Dammit, I've been kidnapped and they took my clothes" moments Anita has every once in awhile. And usually such moments (for the dead bodies, Anita, or otherwise) are rather short lived and only get a page or two through out an entire 30-some chapters of material. Why the *hell* do live, breathing, "Look at me, I'm so sexy" naked ladies get all of the cover space?! They have *NOTHING* to do with the story, people! These stories are dark and dirty, and there's no way a smiling, living, *breathing* naked lady would last ten minutes if she was thrust into one.
What, weren't the tens of thousands of women who were reading the books with the plain old St. Louis covers enough? You had to add naked girls to catch some of the male population? Which, you know, doesn't seem to be working because all of the men I talk to just look at me funny whenever I mention the Anita Blake books, yet I can think of at least seven girls just off the top of my head that have read the books and loved them for the stories, and loved them *before* all the bare skin started showing up on the books' covers.
It's just cheap. And cheapens the story, too, because they damned sure had plenty sex appeal before it was plastered all over their covers like a cheap whore.
/rant
And with that, I'm gonna go to bed, because that rant lasted about an hour longer than I thought it would. What can I say, it's been bugging the hell out of me ever since I bought and started rereading the books.
Anyhoo, I'll shut up now.
The new covers? Make absolutely no sense what so ever. What the hell do naked ladies have to do with anything!? What? Can someone answered this for me? Every friggin cover of the Jove editions features some discretely unrevealing part of female autonomy in the foreground with maybe, *maybe* some small, transparent, easy to ignore image of a wolf or a butterfly or some other entirely small and insignificant reference to the actual story taking place between the covers in the background. The closest any of the covers of the four books I have get to actually giving you an important detail about the story is the one on Circus of the Damned, which has a picture of a cobra on it (a cobra which, by the way, is 'drawn' on the side of one of the aforementioned naked ladies). It's an easy to see reference to Oliver's animal to call, and snakes are, in fact, rather important through out the whole book. However, in Lunatic Cafe? I didn't even *see* the wolf image in the corner until I read the little "this is what other well known authors/magazines have to say about this book" quote new books tend to have that was printed right below it, and even then I didn't notice anything until I saw a weird, out of place spot on the moon that looked kinda like an eye.
Now, tell me... What the hell do naked ladies have to do with the story? Usually the only naked bodies we see in these books (at least until the later ones) are the murder victims Anita is called into investigate, yes? With maybe the occasional "Dammit, I've been kidnapped and they took my clothes" moments Anita has every once in awhile. And usually such moments (for the dead bodies, Anita, or otherwise) are rather short lived and only get a page or two through out an entire 30-some chapters of material. Why the *hell* do live, breathing, "Look at me, I'm so sexy" naked ladies get all of the cover space?! They have *NOTHING* to do with the story, people! These stories are dark and dirty, and there's no way a smiling, living, *breathing* naked lady would last ten minutes if she was thrust into one.
What, weren't the tens of thousands of women who were reading the books with the plain old St. Louis covers enough? You had to add naked girls to catch some of the male population? Which, you know, doesn't seem to be working because all of the men I talk to just look at me funny whenever I mention the Anita Blake books, yet I can think of at least seven girls just off the top of my head that have read the books and loved them for the stories, and loved them *before* all the bare skin started showing up on the books' covers.
It's just cheap. And cheapens the story, too, because they damned sure had plenty sex appeal before it was plastered all over their covers like a cheap whore.
/rant
And with that, I'm gonna go to bed, because that rant lasted about an hour longer than I thought it would. What can I say, it's been bugging the hell out of me ever since I bought and started rereading the books.
Anyhoo, I'll shut up now.