Cover Comparison: The Immortal Rules

This week quite a bit of news has been floating around the blogosphere involving the cover redesign for Julie Kagawa's Blood of Eden series. The first book in the series is The Immortal Rules and if you've read the book then you probably know that the protagonist is part Japanese. AWESOME AM I RIGHT??? But if you take a good long look at the original cover for The Immortal Rules you'll notice that the model for Allison is clearly not Asian. There was a fairly big outcry from fans saying that the cover had been white washed and that a new cover model should be chosen. On top of that, there was also the feeling that the old cover for The Immortal Instruments was just too paranormal looking and didn't embrace the more dystopian nature of the book series as a whole. So HarlequinTeen being the awesome imprint that it is decided to listen to the readers and redesign the cover for The Immortal Rules, and in doing so revamped (no pun intended) the book series covers as a whole! Let's go ahead and compare the change.

                                                                  Original Cover

                                                                    New Covers

Original Cover: All those fans that complained that the cover model wasn't Asian? Yep, they were right. WHITE WASHING. I mean, how hard can it be to find an Asian model? Asian models don't get enough representation as it is! Publishers should be taking advantage of every opportunity they can to highlight diversity. Other than the lack of an Asian model, this cover is WAY too paranormal romance-esque to me. I honestly felt awkward reading this in public because the cover made this book look like a cheap Twilight knock-off instead of the badass vampire centered dystopian it is. I do like that the cover shows a lot of important aspects to the story (like the blood tear) but other than that I'm not really a fan.

New Covers:  Now here's the thing. I like these new covers, I really do, but you'd think that if they bothered to go to all the trouble to redesign the look for the series they'd come up with something a little more, I don't know, eye-catching? One of the problems with the first cover was that it just faded away into a sea of paranormal books. It seems to me that the same thing will happen with these covers, except they'll just be fading away altogether. There's nothing that really makes them stand-out, except that they're super simplistic if you can call that standing out. On top of that WHY CHANGE THE COVER BECAUSE OF WHITE WASHING COMPLAINTS AND THEN NOT FIX THE PROBLEM?!?! Okay, so I know that Julie Kagawa said on her blog that they've gotten a new Asian model and that she'll be featured on the cover either on the inside flap or on the back, but seriously you couldn't put her on the front cover of the book? How hard would that have been?

So who wins? I'm giving it to the new designs. The old cover gave off way too much of a paranormal vibe, and even though it did have some good tie-ins to the story, it totally white washed the main character. The new covers may be a tad on the bland side, but they have a nice classic simplicity to them and they definitely feel more dystopian. The white washing problem is still a bit iffy to me since the Asian model isn't being featured very prominently, but I do think it's a step in the right direction!

Which cover for the The Immortal Rules do you like best? Be sure to vote in the poll below and sound off in the comments about why you made your decision!

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Julia :)