Top 5 Sundays #29 - Book Series With The Best Covers Overall

When it comes to book covers, the true challenge is for its artist is to combine eye-catching beauty with subtle hints about the book's story. And then repeat the process over and over again as the series goes on. I'm a strong believer that a series should have some visual element that ties all the books together, some common theme to their cover designs that says these books are linked, they belong together - sort of like how siblings share common features, so too should books.

So, without further ado, I give you this week's (alright, so technically last week's - I was sick and I'm sorry!) Top 5 Book Series With The Best Covers Overall.

#5 - Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs

Each cover features Mercy, hints either at her being a mechanic or at the story, and showcases her tattoos, each time having them show something different that directly links to the story.

#4 - Jane True series by Nicole Peeler

I love the cartoon quality of these covers - each one showing Jane in a scene from the book. I know animated covers tend to get a lot of criticism - most of it because young readers get the wrong impression - but these covers are nonetheless fantastic in their own right.

#3 - Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews

The general consensus for urban fantasy covers is that you can display the heroine or the hero but you can't display both - that is for romance novels. The Kate Daniels covers, however, found a nice loophole to this - no, you can't display a man and a woman on an urban fantasy cover, but you can display the heroine and her love interest provided one of them wasn't them isn't in his human form. Thus you get Kate, a glimpse of a story-relevant place in the back ground, and Curran in his lion form.

#2 - Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk

Every cover shows Allie, sometimes with her tattoos shown, sometimes with her tattoos concealed, sometimes with magic a nimbus around her, sometimes without magic, but always with a weapon in hand and a setting from the story displayed behind her.

#1 - House of Comarré series by Kristen Painter

I love that this series not only went for image, but colour scheme as well. All the books are elaborately framed in black and feature Chyrsabelle in shades of white and silver in various poses, with only one or two elements coloured bright red. Not only do these covers highlight the books' theme of light and dark, they convey the Gothic tone of the story and the historical connotations of its settings. A remarkably well done feat.