If this cover had a mission, it was clearly “to seek out outdated design and boldly go where no decent layout has gone before.” The Petrina Chronicles might dream of exploring the galaxies, but based on this cover, it barely made it past Microsoft Paint’s launch screen.
Let’s start with the wormhole in the center, which looks less like a cosmic anomaly and more like a cracked CD-ROM catching the light. The color palette screams “sci-fi” in the same way a glitter glue explosion screams “modern art.” We’re talking lavender, magenta, electric blue, and white rays shooting out from what appears to be a nebula made entirely of desktop wallpaper energy. It’s a swirling mess of radial gradients and blur filters that looks like it was last edited during the era of dial-up.
Floating off to the right, we find a spaceship that has apparently just exited a 3D modeling software from 2006. This bad boy is lit in ways that defy both physics and decency. There’s no light interaction between the wormhole and the ship, making it feel like they were introduced in completely different PowerPoint slides and then forced to share a group project. The thrusters are giving off a neon purple glow, but the ship itself is as dull and lifeless as a PowerPoint chart at 9 a.m.
But oh no—we’re not done. Let’s talk typography, which is essentially this cover’s final transmission before being sucked into a design black hole. The title, “The Petrina Chronicles,” is floating in a generic sans-serif font that might as well have been pulled from a cereal box. It has zero flair, zero treatment, and zero reason to exist in its current location. It’s just there—plopped like a sticky note on top of intergalactic chaos.
The tagline, “She dreamed of exploring the galaxies,” is presented in a quiet whisper in the upper right, as if it’s trying not to wake the audience. It’s floating, awkwardly balanced, like someone forgot it and then jammed it in at the last minute. There’s no connection to the imagery, no typographic hierarchy, and absolutely no impact.
And the author’s name? Same font. Same size. Same “my first book cover” energy. It’s positioned at the bottom like a credit roll for someone trying to back away slowly from this design decision.
Final Verdict: This cover is a galaxy of missed opportunities. The design language is incoherent, the assets feel glued together by a rogue intern with access to free stock graphics, and the overall vibe is less “exploring the stars” and more “stuck in orbit around bad design choices.”
Beam us out of here, Petrina. The only thing this cover is exploring is the outer limits of legibility and logic.