Judge That Book

Today’s prompt: “Go ahead. Judge a book by its cover. What does it look like?”

The cover of Adam Silvera’s “They Both Die At the End” is a very effectively rendered book cover. It’s a picture of what appear to be two young men, one with a backpack, although either could be a short-haired woman or nonbinary individual. They are depicted from behind and in silhouette. Skyscrapers are in the background, and a full moon appears behind one building, casting a shadow behind the couple in the foreground in the shape of the Grim Reaper. The cover is largely monochromatic, using gradations of a lovely purplish blue. Our couple is in dark silhouette against the rich blue of the cityscape, which rises up in a gradient to dark skyscrapers against a lighter blue night sky flecked with white stars. There are two whorls of darker blue in the sky, and a third, pointy patch of darker blue below and between them, forming what look like the eye sockets and open nose of a skull. The text on the cover is in a very nice sans-serif font.

It is, overall, a very elegant cover, effectively foreshadowing in multiple ways the doom of the main characters already foretold in the title. The one criticism I have is that since they render the book’s protagonists in silhouette, we can’t see your likeness at all. Or maybe this book isn’t supposed to be about you? Whatever. You die at the end, too.