Keeper of the Lost Cities Thoughts

Cover Analysis: Legacy

First Impressions:

As someone who's pretending to not have read Legacy yet, the cover looks especially weird. Sophie, Keefe, and Fitz are in the Forbidden Cities for some reason, and Sophie's blasting someone with a red, mind-laser, probably-inflicting, lightning bolt thing. And Sophie has a weird new swirly pin. These covers are getting very confusing (and we're not even on to Stellarlune yet).

I have to say that this cover isn't as pretty as a lot of the others. I mean, the art is amazing (It almost always is), but the sky is a weird turquoise shade and the mostly brown human city and Sophie's head laser don't really look quite right against it. This is just my opinion, but I feel like the color scheme for this cover is a strange mix of really normal shades and almost alien colors. And it's almost impossible to tell what time of day it is.

People are going really in-depth on how Sophie is holding Keefe and Fitz's hand, but I won't. Since it all seems to be another facet on the Sokeefe/Sophitz war, I am not going to say anything about this. I refuse. Go somewhere else if you want an in-depth analysis on that.

Current Impressions:

I have a problem with Sophie's red-laser inflicting. Not only does it completely change her inflicting so much that a case can be made for considering it a whole different ability, but Why a red laser? Wouldn't it be easier and more ideal for the Black Swan to redesign her inflicting so that it targets only one person without the laser. I don't see how the laser makes it any better.

And why is the sky turquoise? I know there's probably a logical scientific explanation, but I feel like, in this case, an unusual sky color detracts from the scene.

As on the Nightfall cover, I feel like there's something off about Keefe's face. Not sure what it is, but something's weird.

Are we sure that the Sophie on the cover of the books is the same Sophie as the one in the books? Because cover Sophie wears so much frilly, fancy stuff, the sort of things that book-Sophie says she rarely wears. I like Sophie's ruffly tunic-dress thing (wow, I'm terrible at describing clothing), but it's pretty fancy, and really doesn't look like the sort of thing you'd wear to a fight in London (or to any sort of fight—or even a suspected fight—come to think of it. Honestly, if I was Sophie and I was always getting into battles with the Neverseen, I wouldn't wear something like that.)

Alternate Scenes:

Even if Shannon's main reasons for choosing this scene didn't include representing the Sophitz/Sokeefe rivalry, she had to have known that a Sophie, Keefe, and Fitz scene would cover the ship war pretty well. Even if she just wanted to have a scene that had both Fitz and Keefe in it, I think Shannon knows enough about the fandom to predict its reaction. Though...teal Iggy vs. ice blue Iggy. Seems like Shannon's kind of enjoys watching this ship war go down, so maybe a scene with both Keefe and Fitz was 100% intentional.

This scene's exciting, sure, but I'm biased against it because of the whole ship war aspect. You can disagree with me and still not be wrong. I don't have to go to war with you. It's all our own opinions anyway.

I can't really remember a lot of Legacy, to be honest. In Legacy: amount of information>amount of action by a significant margin. I mean, I like learning new things about the Lost Cities, but a side effect of a lot of information-heavy scenes is that they all tend to blur together. But here are three alternate scenes:

The scene at the Point of Purity. I'm still not completely sure what happened there, and it seemed a little weird and random, but it would probably be a really cool-looking cover. I mean, they went to space! (Cue all the fans saying, "technically, it was a special point in the atmosphere." Yes, I know, but it felt like they were going into space. You don't want me to start reciting dozens of definitions of "space," do you?) Yes, they were in a giant diamond hamster ball, (How does that even work? Evin technology is getting crazier and crazier.) but I think that, if the art was done well, it'd look amazing.

The scene in Loamnore where Wylie exploded the chandelier. (Something really irks me about all the Chandelitz stories. Fitz had one chandelier incident. You know what? So did Wylie. And I'm pretty sure I remember a scene where Dex says, "Sorry it [the gift] isn't wrapped. Rex and Bex used up all the ribbon tying Lex to a chandelier," (I might have mixed the triplets' named up) though I can't find it in the books. Maybe I hallucinated it. Anyway, Chandelitz stories are just people making fun of Fitz. If you want to make fun of Fitz, make fun of him for something legitimate that doesn't apply equally well to two other characters.) This scene would also look cool, and the hidden magsidian crystals blasting out light turned out to be critical when, a while later, they blasted out shadows instead.

Part of the final battle in Loamnore. This scene seemed a little crazy to me. So many people! But it was also an important scene and chaotic enough that Shannon could avoid spoilers on the cover if she was smart about it. And she'd have a lot more options for characters on the cover.

I'm not sure if I'm qualified to determine which (if any) of these scenes would be better than the original. If anyone wants to make any art of these scenes to test these hypotheses out, you have my official permission.

Conclusion:

I didn't like this cover much. I'll freely admit that was due to a variety of factors, not least my dissatisfaction with the shipping argument. Obsessive fan that I am, I feel like the alien color scheme and (in my opinion) not the best scene is less annoying than the problems (My complaints are in Cover Analysis: Lodestar) with Lodestar's cover, so it gets a score 1 point better than Lodestar did: 4.5/10.

Next up is Unlocked, the only Keeper cover so far to not depict a particular scene.