Just because there's a bad cover for a science fiction or fantasy book, it doesn't mean they're not worthy of reading. Far from it, notes the Guardian.
From the piece...
Science fiction and fantasy book cover designs are as fashion fickle as an emo kid's dress sense, and produce the same kind of response. Like some sober-suited middle manager tutting over his son's electric blue spiky haircut, the literary reader sees the genres' gaudy covers and wonders how they can go out in public looking like that. Why can't they be more like a Penguin classic, or that nice Faber poetry collection next door? Boring, says genre as it slouches out of the door to meet its friends. It wouldn't want to be seen in public with the olds anyway. But behind the lurid illustrations hide some masterpieces of fiction.
Among the trending designs in genre covers is one I call the Hooded Wizard Assassin. Available in numerous variants, the design's key feature is a lone heroic figure, usually wielding a sword or staff, and looking vaguely magical/mysterious/dangerous. Inspired by the Assassin's Creed video game, the "bad boy" of SF covers appeals to the adolescent male in all of us. Most of the bad boys are doomed by their low IQs to educational under-achievement and careers in telesales. Jon Courtney Grimwood's The Fallen Blade, on the other hand, is already planning for grad school, but doesn't see why it shouldn't hang with the bad boys and enjoy some rough and tumble first of all.
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