Keeper of the Lost Cities Thoughts

Cover Analysis: Lodestar

This analysis is going to be an interesting one. (If you like the Lodestar cover, you might want to avoid this chapter like a Sophitz shipper would avoid a Wattpad book titled "All the Reasons You Should Ship Sokeefe.")

First Impressions:

Yet again, the hypothetical fan who hasn't read Lodestar yet has no idea what's going on in this scene. Sophie looks like she's throwing something invisible at the Neverseen dude. And Tam is standing next to a guy with a glowing hand. And they're in some sort of ruined cathedral thing.

But it'll probably make sense once I've read it, right?

Current Impressions:

Wrong.

Firstly, I refuse to believe that the weird dude with a glowing hand is Fitz. I don't care if that's what the KotLC fandom website says, I don't care if that's what Shannon Messenger says, I don't care if that's what my best friend says, they're all wrong.

In my opinion, he looks like a total grown-up. And, why is his hand glowing? The "official" excuse is that it's because he's touching the force field, but I don't quite get how that works. His hand looks like it's made of and emanating energy. Also, that only sort of looks like a force field.

And that dude definitely doesn't have teal eyes.

I don't get how it's Fitz.

Which leads to who it really is (yes, it "really is" Fitz, but I'd rather pretend I don't know that).

Three possible options: Brant, Ruy, and Alvar. (Please don't hate me for exploring these obviously-wrong theories because I despise the official answer.) Yes, they'd all be wearing cloaks in this scene, but we already know KotLC covers aren't always true to what the characters would be reasonably wearing (*cough cough* Everblaze)

As of Stellarlune, we know that Psionipaths' hands glow when they're using their ability, but the depiction of Maruca's hands on the cover is nothing like not-Fitz's hand on Lodestar. Also, we can make out his face perfectly well. Conclusion: Ruy is not the most plausible.

For Alvar, he's Fitz's brother, so probably looks similar. He was in this scene, but I don't remember any incidents where Alvar's hand was glowing, so he's not the most plausible answer.

Brant has all those scars, which glowing-hand guy obviously doesn't have, but for years I was convinced it was Brant because of that fire-hand thing he does in this exact scene. If you don't know what I mean, reread this scene. I mean, I'm pretty sure Tam wasn't standing next to Brant, but we already know that the covers can be pretty unrealistic in terms of where people are in relation to each other (*cough cough* Everblaze). Altogether, this isn't very plausible either, but it also has one piece of very compelling evidence. Is it bad to ignore all the evidence that doesn't fit with your theory? Yes. But it feels like there would be a similar situation if glowing-hand guy was Fitz.

Take whichever option you like (you know what, you can decide that glowing-hand guy is Marella if you like, even though she is neither a guy, nor dark-haired, nor in that scene. It won't affect me).

In my cover analysis of Exile, I promised I'd explain my theory for who cloaked-Neverseen-guy is. So here you go: He's Keefe.

I have this theory because the only characters to be on covers, so far, are Sophie, her friends, and Silveny (not counting the wonky Unraveled cover with All Those Humans). My best friend's main argument for why glowing-hand guy has to be Fitz is because if he was Brant/Ruy (I'm not convinced of the Alvar theory), he'd be the only character not in those categories to be on the cover. Even though cloaked-Neverseen-guy is only on the edge of the cover, why shouldn't we apply that rule to him, too (and yes, we know it's a "him." In fact, as of Stellarlune, there is only one female member of the Neverseen that we know of: Gisela (Vespera and Umber are dead, and Glimmer defected.))

Aesthetically, I find this cover a little ugly. You can disagree with me, but there's all that concerningly-textured stone, vines/algae/very ruined curtains gunk on the funny window, and the supposed force field looks more like a malfunctioning power core or something.

Though, this cover has one interesting thing going for it: The shape depicted in the round window over the "R" in Lodestar is a simplified version of the Lodestar symbol. It doesn't actually represent the symbol, but you can get the idea.

Alternate Scenes:

Altogether, this scene was a very short scene that was critical to the story but also kinda random. I'm still not completely sure whether the explanation for how they got there makes any sense.

I would've liked it if Lodestar's cover depicted a scene at Lumenaria, during the summit, or right after it or something. Those scenes made more sense and were more important.

Conclusion:

Ugh.

I don't like this cover. Now maybe you like it and are about to bombard my comments section with all the reasons I'm wrong, but you won't change my mind unless you make a really good argument. (And yes, I've considered: "they worked really hard on the cover and it deserves to be appreciated," and I get that argument. Just, if people are allowed to write thousand word rants on ships, I should be allowed to write thousand word rants on covers. Wattpad thinks this part is only 969 words long, but it's wrong, because it doesn't think that new lines break up words, so its word count is 1 lower than it should be for each time you typed the enter key. This annoys me because I have to copy-and-paste my chapters into Google Docs if I want to do an accurate word count. This part is actually exactly 1000 words long.)

I'd give the Lodestar cover a rating of 3.5/10. It should be ashamed of itself.