The Book Cover Rule of Thumb

I almost fell asleep, Roland March.

            We’ve all heard it: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Yet we do it anyway, and for good reason. We read with our aesthetic appeal before we read with our logic center. (Fancy words for, “Good artwork attracts.”) But why is that? Bah, I don’t know. I’m not here to explain some high-end scientific fact. I’m here to lay down a jam, son.

            Sort of.

            What I want to say is this: Judge books by their covers, but at discretion. For example, looking back I can see that Back On Murder by J. Mark Bertrand’s cover looks like it’ll be a cookie-cutter cop story about a rogue middle-ager looking for his identity. That’s exactly what we received. And Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman told us to prepare for a mystical journey through a fantastic land. Which is also what happened.

            But then there are exceptions, the ones that fool you. For instance, Dragon’s Blood by Jane Yolen gives us the idea we’re about to receive some cheap sci-fi knock-off and we’ll be disappointed. Far from it! That book is rife with creativity and originality. It was great! Or Issym by Jessie Mae Hodsdon, for another example. The cover gave us the impression we would get a fantastic fantasy bursting at the seams with adventure and grit. Dragons! Woo! Were we disappointed? Uh, yeah.

WHERE IS YOUR GRIT?!?!

            Here’s the lowdown. Covers serve a purpose. They’re supposed to attract the reader so that any other book in mind gets forgotten and the eye-catching one gets picked up. Yeah, I know. Cheap media influence: Shiny is better. But alas. That’s what we’ve gotten into. But that can be overcome! Despite the cover, the writing and story are always what prevail in the land of writing. While the cover may be glossy and pretty, if the writing sucks, forget it. So judge books by their cover, but only after you’ve had a taste of the writing and story within. Then you’ll see just how appealing the book really is.

Novel Review: Seekers: Return to the Wild, Book Two, - The Melting Sea by Erin Hunter

            Remember my post on Island of Shadows? I’m going to try my hardest not to be too scathing here. Bear with me. (Get it? Bear? Never mind.)

            So! In Island of Shadows, we found Toklo, Lusa, Kallik, and Yakone finally off that stupid island and onto the next leg of their journey. And that’s what we get for the vast majority of the book. Travel. Movement. Stopping to rest here, hunting there, digging out a den over in that corner. Again, this is not why I read a book. If I wanted to see bears traveling and digging out dens, I would watch the Discovery Channel or NatGeo (National Geographic). I do not understand what is running through Erin Hunter’s head right now, but quality certainly isn’t at the top of the list, and the stumble is painfully obvious. Has been for quite a few books, not just in this series.

            While the hunting and traveling is okay to a degree, we as readers demand more action, more struggle. Yeah, the bears get into binds once in a while, but it’s nothing that’s not easily fixed, and that aggravates the crap out of me. Nothing life-threatening has happened yet, and that is an annoyance factor as well. Where’s the stress? The internal turmoil? The doubt, the wanting to give up? Everything that makes characters as human as possible? Even when their animals, they need to display the same hero characteristics. No exception is given there. Look at the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. They hit obstacles all the time in their journeys, and they struggle against evil as hard as they can, and they’re all animals! (Note: While some may argue that his plots are “recycled,” I say you can never have enough hero lore in a land steeped in as much history as his is.)

            But that struggle is only present in certain situations in The Melting Sea. We run into random bears that need “help” and they hang around for a minute, but then the ultimate appearance of them has no real meaning. The reason the white bears were being taken to land is left unexplained, and that bothered me. Finally, when we did have some battling to do, Kallik finally showed some internal turmoil, but not for long. And the conflict with Taqqiq and his crew was short at best. I think that could have taken up a much larger portion of the book to add spice and conflict that would have ripped Kallik apart had Taqqiq not bowed to her anger so quickly, and then that would spawned more conflict and tension because the seals were growing scarce and the ice was melting, and Taqqiq’s crew would be stalking about causing more havoc . . . you can see how it needed to be written. I don’t care about a crag in a stupid mountain that the bears have to climb up. I care about what they’ll do in the face of hardship.

            Another note before the verdict: The writing seems . . . not choppy. But it seems like the Erin responsible for this series isn’t giving it her all. The punches are lacking, and the dynamic flow of showing v. telling is interrupted with clichés and awkward phrasing. The flow is broken in plenty of places by too-long sentences and amateur Wordsmithing. Sad. They used to be so good. Seekers: Return to the Wild: The Melting Sea gets Two flipped pages out of Ten.