Welcome to this week’s entry in “Glow Stick Disasters in Space,” starring a cover that asks: What if a radioactive butterfly crash-landed in a cyberpunk nightclub and then forgot why it was there?
Behold: Expedition, Volume 5 of The Valmoran Chronicles. What does it chronicle? We may never know. The cover doesn’t tell us. All we get is one enormous, nuclear-grade butterfly glowing like it’s about to headline a trance festival. This isn’t “expedition,” this is insect rave therapy.
Let’s start with the butterfly. It’s not just glowing—it’s lit from every direction in a way that violates at least four natural laws. It’s like someone discovered the outer glow effect in Photoshop and thought, “Yes. But make it lethal.” The wings have the texture of cracked glass and the color palette of a bug zapper after a power surge.
Next: The fonts. Oh, the fonts. We’ve got a grab bag of techno-gibberish typefaces that look like they were pulled straight from a floppy disk in 1996. “THE VALMORAN CHRONICLES” is written in a distressed, pixel-chunk font that thinks it’s being edgy, while “EXPEDITION” has the subtlety of a laser tag arena. And just when your eyes begin to adjust, “POPPY ORION” floats in with an identity all its own, seemingly unaware that fonts should at least try to get along.
Then there’s the genre confusion. Is this fantasy? Sci-fi? A misunderstood YA metaphysical glow-up? With no characters, no setting, and no visual clue beyond the interdimensional disco bug, we’re left to guess. You could slap this thing on a trance DJ’s debut EP and no one would blink.
Let’s not ignore the stock image abuse, either. That butterfly has definitely lived many lives. Unfortunately, this one is its worst. It’s been filtered, frosted, over-glowed, and slapped on a galactic void with all the elegance of a Windows 95 screensaver.
In conclusion, Expedition sets off boldly into the unknown—with no map, no genre, and no design restraint. It’s not a book cover. It’s a cautionary tale told in RGB lighting.
Take a seat, Valmoran Chronicles. You’re glowing for all the wrong reasons.