Throwdown Thursday is a weekly thing (hosted by the Neverending Shelf & thanks to All Things Urban Fantasy who opened my eyes to it) where we tackle books with similar characters, covers, themes, etc. to determine which one rocks more. It is up to YOU to determine the winner.
Kat Richardson's covers featured in last weeks Throwdown consisted of the second and third US and German installments within her Greywalker series. The leading covers, determined from the most votes, were the US.
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This week, two varying and different covers are up for the debate of preference. A dip into different settings, the visual art up for comparison holds a composition of opposing features - hardness against softness, light against dark - whilst possessing a vibe that connects them loosely.
In a first and second installment cover comparison, where does your preference lie?
'Seductive danger and steampunk adventure abound in the gritty world of the Iron Seas, where nanotech is fused with Victorian sensibilities—and steam.
After the Iron Duke freed England from Horde control, he instantly became a national hero. Now Rhys Trahaearn has built a merchant empire on the power — and fear — of his name. And when a dead body is dropped from an airship onto his doorstep, bringing Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth into his dangerous world, he intends to make her his next possession.
Mina can’t afford his interest, however. Horde blood runs through her veins, and despite the nanotech enhancing her body, she barely scratches out a living in London society. Becoming Rhys’s lover would destroy both her career and her family, yet the investigation prevents her from avoiding him…and the Iron Duke’s ruthless pursuit makes him difficult to resist.
But when Mina uncovers the victim’s identity, she stumbles upon a conspiracy that threatens the lives of everyone in England. To save them, Mina and Rhys must race across zombie-infested wastelands and treacherous oceans — and Mina discovers the danger is not only to her countrymen as she finds herself tempted to give up everything to the Iron Duke.' -- The Iron Duke.
'“Close your eyes tightly—tightly— and keep them closed . . .”
From a Victorian Ireland of magic, poetry and rebellion, Ida Jameson, an amateur occultist, reaches out for power, but captures Laura Armstrong, a modern-day graphic artist, instead. Now, for the man or demon she loves, each woman must span a bridge through Hell and across history . . . or destroy it.
“Every passionate man is linked with another age, historical or imaginary, where alone he finds images that rouse his energy.” W. B. Yeats
Anchored in fact on both sides of history, Laura and Ida, modern rationalist and fin de siècle occultist, are linked from the moment Ida channels Laura into the body of celebrated beauty and Irish freedom-fighter Maud Gonne. When Laura falls—from an ocean and a hundred years away—passionately, Victorianly in love with the young poet W. B. Yeats, their love affair entwines with Irish history and weaves through Yeats’s poetry until Ida discovers something she wants more than magic in the subterranean spaces in between.
With her Irish past threatening her orderly present and the man she loves in it, Laura and Yeats—the practical materialist and the poet magus—must find a way to make love last over time, in changing bodies, through modern damnation, and into the mythic past to link their pilgrim souls . . . or lose them forever.' -- In Dreams Begin.
This Throwdown will remain open until 25th August 2010.
1 comments:
This is tough. For their respective genres, I think each cover is perfect.
You have the gadgety Brook cover with the fog ladden sky and airship portraying the contents nicely if not a little roughly. Skyler's conversly portrays fantasy in all its glory. However, neither of these covers are a favorite of mine. I like them, they're distinctive but not favorites by any means. To me, they stand against each other equal in strength. No winner. No loser.
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