Some covers whisper mystery. Some shout adventure. And then there’s Just Being Loki, which kicks down the door, dumps a bag of Photoshop effects on your floor, and yells, “FIGURE IT OUT.”
First, our brooding male lead. He stands there, expression locked somewhere between “mildly inconvenienced” and “still waiting for his Uber,” wearing a black T-shirt with a stylized snake emblazoned on the front—subtlety, thy name is not Loki. He’s not armed with a sword, nor a staff, nor any prop of mythic significance. No, this Loki prefers the power of casual wear.
Beside him is our heroine, beaming like she just found out she’s the only one who remembered to book spa day. Her fiery red hair cascades over a mysterious outfit, and sprouting from her back is a single, colossal wing—one wing, because symmetry is for mortals. Both characters are surrounded by a bizarre radioactive glow, the kind that makes you wonder if they’ve been blessed by the gods or just wandered too close to a nuclear power plant.
The background? A moonlit forest, though it’s hard to focus on it when the human glow sticks in the foreground are beaming like alien abductees mid-transport. A hawk soars overhead, because if you’re already throwing in Norse gods, glowing people, and inexplicable wing choices, why not add some wildlife?
And then there’s the typography—oh, the typography. “Just Being Loki” is delivered in a bronze-to-neon green gradient that suggests either mythic energy or a particularly aggressive mold infestation. Above it, “Vikings of Virginia – Book Three” hovers awkwardly, daring you to figure out how Norse mythology landed in the American mid-Atlantic without the aid of time travel.
The end result is a glowing, mismatched buffet of fantasy tropes, stock imagery, and inexplicable design choices. Loki, the god of mischief, would absolutely approve—just maybe not enough to put it on his Tinder profile.