Mysterious Hooded Figure
Sunday, August 30th, 2009After checking out the “Proof that Every Fantasy Book Cover Must Contain a Sword” post over at io9, I opened it up on my iPod Touch and went over to my bookshelf for comparison. I definitely had a few laughs, as not only is the chart true, but some of the categories, like “Completely dark cover of meaninglessness” are hilarious.
One thing that immediately jumped out at me was that there seems to be a recent trend that Orbit Books did not include in their fantasy book cover analysis. It seems that everywhere I turn I’m seeing new fantasy books come out with “mysterious hooded figures” on the cover, or at least “mysterious cloaked figures”. Below are some samples of what I mean.
What do you think caused this trend? The popularity of video games like Assassin’s Creed? The element that this type of cover adds that blends the fantasy/urban fantasy genres? Either way, we’re inundated.
