30 Covers, 30 Days 2011: Day 25

Today's cover was created in 24 hours by the ingenious Jamie Keenan:



Lancer's War by Tom Martin (Tom Martin is the author's username. His name requested for his cover was Tom Olivier-Martin).

No one can predict the future.

There was no apocalypse that ravaged the planet, no global disaster. The near collapse of humanity came from the apathy and depravity that has always defined us. The last megacorporations are now pivotal to humanity's survival, specializing in resource recycling, agriculture and energy, the secrets of which are highly coveted and incredibly well guarded. It would seem that war would be inevitable, but a new sort of global conflict has arisen.

Enter the Lancers, mercenaries that pilot massive cyborgs, sponsored by governments and private organizations. They fight for the access rights to the megacorporation's resources, dueling in gladiatorial-style combat, at once both a source of great entertainment for the masses and the only hope some countries have of re-emerging from this new age of poverty.

Ethan and Chloe are up-and-coming Lancers, orphaned twins that were raised and bred to be the best. All seems well in their world until they meet Rana, a secretive and anti-social girl that might just be the best Lancer anyone has ever seen, but whose true nature might tear them apart. And even as they struggle to consolidate their differences, the war of the Lancers will take its toll and cost them more than they could ever imagine.

Will they survive the true price of being a Lancer, or will it destroy them, like it has so many others before?

No one can predict the future.




Jamie Keenan lives in England and designs book covers.

Really busy, but once you see the title, you're like OHHH

I LOVE THIS
....very very very clever
Only I couldn't find the title..but that dosen't matter, it attracts readers immediatley!

Do you think the major companies might get a little edgy seeing thier logos on a book cover like this? Don't get me wrong, the execution of the style is astoundingly clever, but, I had a very very hard time looking for the name of the author who I thought might have been Oliver, or that might have been the name of the book, I had to scroll down to work it out.

Very clever. The synopsis sounds great too.
But I'm a little confused as to why the name Oliver is there. Maybe I'm missing something...

LOve this cover! very different and clever. love all the different logos but what other people have said - it's hard to figure out the author's name ( and title)

Sorry, but this one's too confusing to me. I like the concept, but you have to already know the title in order to find it.

As an off-note, I find it interesting that the vast majority of synopses chosen for cover art are fantasy-oriented. Was that a deliberate meme?

Don't like this one. Too difficult to pick out the title and author name from the noise of other things.

After my eyes stopped darting all over the cover, they still couldn't pick out the title or the author. Finding out these vitally important things from the synopsis still didn't help. Also, it seems that Olivier is just as important as the other words on the cover.

If I were Tom Martin, I'd be very disappointed but probably too polite to comment negatively.

The synopsis is good, but I wouldn't pick up the book to read it based on this cover.

....really?

:-/ Honestly, not my favorite cover. Can I be honest? I liked the covers from last year better. They just were. But all the synopses have been amazing. One of the things that bugs me though is that last year, if you wanted to be even considered, you had to try and keep up with the daily word count and such. This year some of them haven't and that makes me wonder if just having a synopsis is the only thing that's important instead of ACTUALLY writing it. I mean, you can see the effort and I know people have busy lives, but really, I prefer the method they had last year.
But anyways, here is what I think of the synopsis. Tom Olivier-Martin, it is excellent. It's not vague, flows, and sounds like it'd be an amazing book to read. I hope to see it in a Barnes and Noble store in the future. :)

I love the sound of the book, but I'm not feeling the cover. As many have already said, it's too busy and too difficult to pick out the vitally important title and author's name. I finally got tired of it and just scrolled down to see what it was.

That said, I might pick it up just to find out what on earth such a busy cover was for, so it would get it's job done at the very least.

synopsis=amazing. Cover= a little bit confusing, but still eye-catching. I would definitely read this, and hope to read it soon!

The cover is really good and I can't wait for it to be published, but the cover is less than spectacular. Yet another cover that is confusing and hard to understand. The only way you would know what the title was is if you knew before hand. I agree with dolphinherovamp5. The covers from last year were much better.

I feel like I'm the only one who immediately saw the title and author's name before scrolling down xD (okay I thought his name was just Tom Olivier). It just popped out at me, since Lancer's War seem to be the only two words that followed one another and made sense, and I figured the author's name would be right under it, or close by. I think it'd help if the title and his name were used in the same font/coloring.

Anyway, I do agree that it's congested and kinda just looks like some sort of traveling guide. Or maybe like a kid's collage project o.o

Apparently I'm not American-consumer-culture-savvy enough to realise those were logos; even after being told, I recognised the one that's a credit card (Mastercard?) but that's it. So whoops. But I'm definitely an outlier in this case.

Other than that, though ... ehhhhhhh. I have no idea what the title or the author's name is, and even when I looked down to see, I still can't find any instances of the words coming together in a meaningful way, so. I'd pick it up in a store just because I was like "wtf is this??" and check the spine for the relevant information, but whether I end up picking it up and opening it is another matter.

The synopsis, on the other hand, sounds fantastic. Not sure if I'd read it, because (as I said on another cover, actually) I'm depressed enough by real life that I'm sort of shying away from dystopia lately, but that's not a comment on the synopsis.

After reading the post of the person above, I also went to the artist's webpage. The covers are awesome and I really enjoyed looking at them.

Now that the original post has been amended with the author's full name, the Olivier makes TONS more sense (i was really confused about it originally!) but now i can immediately make out the authors name and title ... but you do have to know his name first lol

his name really stands out though once you know what to look for! i'm assuming the 'main' name is the Tom in the grey circle, the green italicized Olivier and then purple Martin surrounded by dashes.

i love the tiny 'a novel' in the top right hand corner as the amazon logo!

I'd agree with a lot of people here and say it is really hard just by looking at it to find the title and author. I get what he's trying to do with all the logos of the corporations, but something should stand out the most and be obvious as the title and author.

I want to like the over-the-top use of corporate iconography for this cover — but, like others who commented before me, I found it impossible to single out LANCER'S WAR and TOM OLIVIER-MARTIN from the jumble without reading the note and synopsis below.