This cover is less The Oath and more The Anatomical Atrocity. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a fantasy romance gets shoved through a blender set to “clip art collision,” look no further.
Let’s start with the dynamic duo front and center. The rider in back is holding on for dear life—not to the wyvern, but apparently to his ability to maintain a functioning skeletal structure. His right forearm is comically short, like someone hit “shrink limb” in Photoshop and called it a day. Meanwhile, his left arm is so thin it may qualify as a single brushstroke. Anatomy? Never heard of her.
But it doesn’t stop at noodle limbs. The physical overlap between the two characters defies spatial logic. The back rider’s pelvis either melds seamlessly into the front rider’s kidneys, or he’s riding sidesaddle in a pocket dimension. Choose your own misadventure.
And what’s casting that awkward shadow across the passenger’s face? It looks less like lighting and more like the illustrator got bored halfway through and dragged a dark brush across the layer. It’s not mood—it’s muddle.
Now let’s talk about the wyvern, the poor background creature presumably meant to be majestic. Its left wing is bent in a way that suggests it’s either double-jointed, folded through time, or suffering a catastrophic design flaw. The tail is mysteriously translucent, letting us peer through to the clouds behind it like a magical reptilian ghost. Is this stealth mode or just a forgotten layer mask?
Still not weird enough? Don’t worry. In the upper-left corner, we get the rainbow quartet of sticker horses, which have clearly been slapped on like an afterthought from a sticker book titled Pride Parade: Pony Edition. It’s the kind of floating logo that screams, “Yes, this was assembled in PowerPoint.”
The font? Passable. But compared to the chaos surrounding it, it’s like throwing a sensible pair of shoes onto a flaming clown.
In summary, The Oath is a visual handshake from an illustrator who never agreed on what reality looks like. The characters are collapsing into themselves, the dragon is phasing in and out of existence, and the whole thing feels like a fantasy fever dream you’d wake up from and immediately sketch on a Denny’s napkin at 3 a.m.
This isn’t high fantasy. This is why fantasy.