When you hear World War 3.2, do you think of epic battles, desperate humanity, and the march of history reshaped? Or do you think… software update? Because this cover has all the excitement of “please restart your computer to finish installing.”
Let’s start with the title treatment. “3.2” is blown up like the big reveal, but styled in a way that screams PowerPoint slide deck. Instead of menace, it gives us patch notes: “World War 3.2 – fixed minor bugs in global annihilation, improved tank mobility, addressed time paradox exploit.”
And the tanks? Oh, the tanks. These aren’t fearsome war machines, they’re clipart silhouettes from the “Free Vector Pack for Middle School Reports on WW2.” Flat, lifeless, and about as intimidating as a shadow puppet. One looks like it might be firing missiles; the other looks like it’s on its way to a children’s museum exhibit.
The background tries to add depth with a faint clock, a nod to “Axis of Time.” But instead of thematic weight, it looks like a watermark that forgot to fade all the way out. Combined with the chunky red divider bar across the middle, the whole design feels less like a thriller and more like a government-issued pamphlet titled So You’ve Been Drafted: Now What?
Sure, the cover is readable. You can see the title and the author’s name. But being legible isn’t the same as being good. A stop sign is legible. So is a supermarket receipt. Neither one makes you want to dive headfirst into a 400-page saga of alternate history warfare.
This isn’t the apocalypse. This isn’t time-shattering military sci-fi. This is World War: The PowerPoint Presentation.