Sometimes a book cover promises “hot,” “steamy,” or even “elemental magic,” but what it actually delivers is glamour shot meets dragon-themed clip art explosion. Welcome to Steam, a cover that feels like it was assembled during a caffeine rush inside a stock image folder marked “elemental nonsense.”
Right off the bat, we’re greeted by a model who looks like she’s been transported directly from a 1996 hair dye box. Her lighting doesn’t match anything around her, and she’s pasted onto a background made of purple swirls, texture noise, and digital regret.
Then come the dueling dragon heads.
One on fire. One made of ice. Neither integrated.
They float in the foreground like rejected designs from a Hot Wheels vs. Pokémon crossover. The fire dragon roars. The ice dragon also roars. Do they interact with the woman? The title? The plot? Absolutely not. They just exist. Majestically. Aimlessly.
And the title — oh, the title.
Steam.
Set in a dry-brush font that looks like it was pulled from a “cool edgy T-shirt” generator, overlapping the dragons, the fire, the hair — it’s barely legible and completely disconnected from genre or tone. What is “Steam”? A magic system? A spa treatment? A new line of bath products? Because it’s sure not what’s happening on this cover.
Above the title, a glowing bubble reads “Triple Trouble Series” with a little doodled wolf head logo — because nothing says “cohesive design” like adding a random light-up sticker in the middle of the chaos. Below that: “Prequel 2,” like this is an episode of a fantasy soap opera you’re somehow already behind on.
Now let’s address the type hierarchy, or rather, the lack of it.
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Steam is huge, but lost in the visual noise.
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“Lesli Richardson writing as Tymber Dalton” is sandwiched into two font styles at the bottom like the designer ran out of time and just typed it out wherever it fit.
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There are at least four competing fonts on the cover. At this point, the typography isn’t just mismanaged — it’s in open rebellion.
Final thoughts?
This isn’t a book cover. It’s a fantasy fever dream trapped in a graphic design group project gone rogue. It wants to be mystical and powerful, but ends up looking like a YA fire-and-ice face-off at a clip art convention.
This isn’t Steam.
It’s Stock Assets, Bad Fonts, and Fire Lizards Yelling at Nothing.