Vae Victis: woe to the vanquished.
Will you be defeated?
Enter my arena, where you'll find brutal honesty, blunt critiques and epidermic reaction to what you call writing.
The title is vague and could be used for any kind of text:
- an essay on the first Muslims or Christians when their cult were not so popular;
- a fantasy novel with a dark cult willing to use dark blood-magic to free a god of destruction, war, death or cats (or anything as dreadful);
- a space-opera about a group of people believing in micro organisms present in blood giving extra sensory powers and the will of using light blades in a world of lazerguns and planet destroying deathrays.
- a porn novel about a group of woman worshiping a man with the biggest di... You see my point.
But does the vagueness of it make the title a bad one?
Nope. And the reason is that I could come out with four pitches in five minutes just by the power of a single word. And because I have a lot of imagination (and because I unfortunately saw Star-Wars episode one and because I happen to have a enormous di... you see my point).
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Cover
The first words that came to my mind facing the cover were: classy, minimalist, dark, and sandwich (I was hungry then). The few words are easily readable white on black, and thanks the Universe, there is no tagline (like "The believers: believe me, you will not believe what they believed") or excerpt or any sticker to ruin the impact (please people, I know you're proud of your achievements, I am too but 3 stickers is two too much and being a participant in a contest or award is NOT an achievement).
Sorry, I digress...
The black and white picture fits the tone, but fail to match the title. The young girl is probably the main character and one can only imagine she's one of the believers or soon to be or fighting against them, but the link is far from obvious. There again, it's not really a bad thing except that 1) the young lady should probably see a doctor to help her get rid of her eating disorder and 2) if she's supposed to be the main character, it goes against my prerogative as a reader to imagine her features based on the text (like casts. I hate casts. Please people, stop adding casts to your stories, you're supposed to be authors stimulating readers' imagination, not movie directors recruiting actors who never will be part of your crapy movie)
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Blurb
The first sentence (and first paragraph) of the blurb are very effective.
