Judging A Book By The Cover – Forging of a Knight: Knighthood’s End

Forging of a Knight: Knighthood’s End – The Knightiest Knight Story in Existence

We often wondered how many knights should be in the title of a book. We think this book gives us the answer. In what must be the knightiest story in all of knightdom (and book five of the Forging of a Knight series), Forging of a Knight: Knighthood’s End appears to be the story of a knight, or former knight, under, or breaking some kind of spell.

As we look at the description of the book, we learn this to be true.

“For the sake of a forbidden love, Qualtan will find himself on the run with a Mah-Zakim to free her from her curse, or be consumed by it. No longer a knight, his friends now turned against him, how great will the price be that must be paid? Can a Mah-Zakim truly love back, or has the curse that has followed the First Knight for so long come true at last?”

Let us look at the art of the cover. It is pretty standard fare for indie books. There is an animated, cartoonish style to it that drains some of the mystery or intrigue it may otherwise inspire. While we like how well the central premise of the book is so well depicted, we feel it could have been done more successfully had it not been so on the nose.

Knighthood’s End’s Cover Has More Than Art

It also has that title. We will reiterate. That Title. Forging of a Knight: Knighthood’s End has way too many knights on the cover (two in the form of the word, and one character). It is a little too much for us, to be honest. The redundancy in the title does not push the point forward, but rather fall flat on our ears, robbing the word knight of meaning.

The combination of the art and the title makes us lurch away when we see it. Lower quality covers, or titles with issues such as this, will ward off casual readers. Most people won’t bother giving a book with a poor cover a second look.

Judging A Book By Its Cover

We do our best to help authors, but thus far had stayed away from judging book covers. We are over that fear. Unfortunately, the cover of your book is just as important as anything that may lay within. The cover is the first (and sometimes last) thing your prospective readers may see. We are on the precipice of beginning to read the Forging of a Knight series (which seems pretty good so far) but the cover almost made us balk. We want to help author’s in any way that we can. If putting bad covers on blast helps, we will do everything that we can to improve the quality of indie publishing.

You can check out the Forging of a Knight Series on Amazon.