thoughtfulThe Toby Daye books are getting gender neutral/male covers.
Picture a generic urban fantasy cover. The odds are good, unless you were thinking of the Dresden Files or the Simon Canderous books, that you pictured a woman in tight pants and a skimpy top, probably looking exotic and dangerous at the same time. She may or may not be holding a knife. If she is, it doesn't really look like it would do all that much damage when used to stab someone, although it might use all of its extra flourishes and points to get stuck on their clothing. Despite being in mortal peril, her hair is perfect, and her makeup is expertly applied. She may or may not bear any resemblance to the woman on the other side of that cover, but by the Great Pumpkin, she is Urban Fantasy Babe, and she will cut you with her richly saturated color palette.
(To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with these covers, and I'm sort of hoping to get one for Discount Armageddon, since Verity does wear impractical shoes, skimpy clothes, and makeup. Although she wouldn't be caught dead with a knife that couldn't be used to gut a rhino, should the need arise. She is a deeply practical impractical girl.)
Now picture an urban fantasy cover for a book with a male lead. Again, the odds are good that what you're seeing is a man dressed in dark clothing, against a moody, atmospheric background. There is no random lightning; nothing is inexplicably on fire; he's probably not wearing any makeup, and his hair may very well look like he forgot to brush it last Tuesday and hasn't remembered to catch up since. If he has weapons, they're practical ones. Ditto his shoes.
Now take a look at the five currently available Toby covers. In all five, she's wearing dark clothes, including a leather jacket that, while comfortable, doesn't exactly make her look like a bad-ass leather biker babe; more like a girl raiding her boyfriend's closet because it's cold outside. On three of the five, she's wearing jeans. On one, she's wearing a dress that leaves absolutely everything to the imagination, since it's basically full medieval formal gown. On another, she has no jeans because she has no legs, but does have a black top and, again, a leather jacket. In three of the five, she's visibly, and accurately, armed. There are no poses; there are no seductive looks; there's definitely no makeup. If you ignore the fact that Toby is female, they're the kind of covers that usually go on urban fantasies with male leads.
This could not delight me more.
Toby's covers are an accurate portrayal of what you're going to find between them. If she was posed more like our friend, Urban Fantasy Babe, people would be justified in getting annoyed when Toby didn't act like her. Instead, she's posed the way the men of urban fantasy are normally posed, and she acts a lot like them, too. There may be some people who don't pick up the books because they want something sexier, but I think the people who do pick them up get what they're expecting, and I think that helps, in the long run. Truth in advertising is fun!
Thoughts?
April 20 2011, 17:47:41 UTC 6 years ago
Since you asked, I'll confess I never really saw the covers the way you described them. I have a mental picture of what Toby looks like, which is nothing like any of the covers, and probably not what you had in mind either. And it's the same with just about every book I read that has a picture of characters on the cover; I usually ignore it and just enjoy a trip win which the author's imagination gets filtered through mine.
The pictures of Toby are all unmistakably female, and so I never thought of them as gender-neutral for a second.
I did, however, respond much more positively to the second two covers than to the first two. It seemed to me, the Toby on R&R and LH looks like a rather shabby goth girl who has done something to her ears. She doesn't look supernatural, nor like she gives a rip about anything much less that she'd take on someone else's problem because it was the right thing to do.
The Tobys on AAN and LE, it seems to me, are definitely faerie. They're colorful in a way that communicates glamour. And I LOVE the way LE Toby has her leather jacket on over the dress. That just seems so in character with the Toby I envision.
April 22 2011, 19:29:51 UTC 6 years ago