Top Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly challenge that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers creating and sharing lists on various book topics. In this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, participants are tasked with listing their favourite books that have green covers in honour of Saint Patrick’s Day.
I always love lists that let me look at cool covers, and this was one of the more interesting ones I’ve had the chance to do. It turns out that green is an awesome colour to use for book art, and a lot of novels I’ve loved over the years have made great use of green in their amazing covers. As such, I was left with a huge list of potential covers to feature on this list. I was eventually able to whittle it down to the very best, and I have included the 10 book covers (plus a few more in an honourable mentions section), that utilised this colour to its greatest effectiveness. The resulting list is very cool, and I think it showcased an excellent cross section of books I’ve loved over the years with epic and green covers.
Honourable Mentions:
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
A great cover that makes strong use of green instead of the usual red we associate with Margaret Atwood’s books.
Oaths of Damnation by Robbie Macniven
While there is a lot of focus on the red power armour of the Space Marine on this cover, I personally love the green mist and buildings in the background. This green backdrop deeply enhances the already cool picture, and hints at the darker nature of these mysterious warriors.
The green jungle really pops in this cool cover.
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
A simple but effective green cover that I’ve always enjoyed.
Top Ten Tuesday:
Thanks to an overabundance of green things throughout the franchise, there are several Warhammer 40,000 novels that I want to feature on this list, but I thought I would start off with an obvious choice and focus on a cover featuring the dangerous greenskins of this universe, the orks. There were several ork focused covers I could have used here, but I liked the one for Warboss the most, mainly because it has the most variety and comedic charm. This is one of the more entertaining covers I want to feature here, although special mention should also go to Brooks’ other ork Warhammer 40,000 books Brutal Kunnin and Da Big Dakka, both of which had great green covers.
Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
A classic fantasy novel I had to feature here was the fourth and final original Eragon novel, Inheritance. All four of the series’ original covers featured strong colours corresponding to a dragon from the plot, and this includes Inheritance, which features a cool green dragon. The great inclusion of a new green dragon, plus the different shades of green around him as part of the cover really stood out to me, and this is one of first books I think of associated with the colour green.
Amazon
False Value by Ben Aaronovitch
Another cool fantasy novel that makes great use of the colour green in its cover is False Value by Ben Aaaronovtich. The eighth book in the author’s Rivers of London series (all of which feature awesome covers), False Value really stands out thanks to its spooky use of green in the urban sprawl that makes up the cover. The vivid and spectral bright green is very striking, and it also cleverly represents the ghostly nature of the investigation the protagonists are involved with. An overall great cover that fits this interesting story extremely well.
Amazon
I felt that the outstanding novel Boundless by legendary fantasy author R. A. Salvatore is a perfect inclusion here. Featuring one of the book’s iconic Drow characters shaded in green, and with green colouration around him melding into a dark background, the cover for Boundless is pretty dawn awesome, and I’ve always loved its ethereal and intense vibe.
Jingo by Terry Pratchett
It’s not an Unseen Library list without a Discworld novel, and for this post I decided to focus on Jingo, which features a gorgeous cover from unique author Josh Kirby (I featured Kirby’s expanded cover here). While much of the action in this exaggerated cover takes place on brown/yellow ships, the use of green in the roiling ocean below is incredible, and it brings the entire artwork together perfectly. I love the use of green here, and this cover was some of Kirby’s best work.
Whisper in the Wind by Luke Arnold
I really enjoy the great mixture of smaller sketches and creatures layered throughout this cover, especially as the various shades of green stands out amongst the black and yellowish green of the boarder. A fantastic cover that makes excellent use of various shades and combinations of green to prepare readers for the adventure to come.
King’s Enemy by Ian Ross and The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie
I’m doing a joint entry here for these two epic books, because both use green in the same way with their covers. Featuring an emerald, green banner bedeck with a lion, the King’s Enemy and The Wisdom of Crowds’ covers both look very striking, with the green standing out amongst the raging battle and war behind them. I like these two covers equally, as while the green banner in The Wisdom of Crowds looks cooler, I love the green smoke coming up behind the banner in King’s Enemy. It helps that both these novels are exceptional five-star reads, and I’m really happy to feature them both here.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The green shaded, ruined world of the cover of Service Model is very awesome, and I think it sets the mood perfectly for this outstanding narrative. An excellent cover for a hilarious and thought-provoking novel.
Deathworlder by Victoria Hayward
Another very cool Warhammer 40,000 novel I needed to feature on this list, is the brutal novel Deathworlder, the debut novel from Victoria Hayward. This cover really fits the dark and desperate nature of Deathworlder’s plot, and I love the cool green colours used throughout it. The green colouration of the Catachan soldiers are cool at several levels, especially as it highlights the jungle fighting, camouflaged nature of these characters. At the same time, it also works to show how the humans are no longer blending into the now alien infested world they find themselves on, with the once green plants turning purple all around them. As such, the green really helps to tell part of Deathworlder’s story on the cover, and it looks outstanding as it does so.
Green Lantern comics
For the final entry on this list, I really wanted to feature at least one comic cover that used a lot of green. While I was tempted to highlight some Marvel comics thanks to a variety of green Hulks, I instead went down the DC Comics route and chose some covers that were utilised during Geoff Johns’ legendary Green Lantern run. There were a ton of awesome covers during this period that were so damn exceptional thanks to their different uses of green, and I ended up deciding to feature a few here as they all looked cool in different ways. This includes the below cover for the volume, Revenge of the Green Lanterns, which has some subtle green up front and centre, with protagonist Hal Jordan’s ring coming up in front of his obscured body and face.
I also loved the cover used for another volume of the same run, Wanted: Hal Jordan. The use of green is a lot more prominent for this volume, and I like how it is showcased with the desperate and damaged protagonist.
The below cover for the Blackest Night comic is also extremely awesome, especially with the more muted green light from the protagonist’s ring providing some spooky green illumination to the zombie characters surrounding him.
The final Green Lantern comic I want to feature is from the first volume of the Green Lantern (2011) series in The New 52. While I’m not the biggest fan of The New 52 relaunch, the below cover was pretty baller with the green smoke and Green Lantern symbols, and it was so cool to see Sinestro in the green again after all these years. A very worthy final entry for this list.
And with those amazing comic covers, we’re at the end of my latest list. I think the above collection of covers came together extremely well, and the resulting barrage of green looks amazing. Not only are all the books and comics above pretty to look at, but they also feature some great stories that are really worth checking out. Let me know what you think about my collection of covers below, and I’ll be interested to hear about your favourite green covers as well.
The Unseen Library 