4.25.2012

Joy! Cover for Outpost by Ann Aguirre


Update 4/25/12: Final Cover Version!
Coming 09/04/12
OUTPOST
Razorland, Book Two
ISBN-13: 978-0312650094
Feiwel & Friends, 336 pages.
Find it on AmazonB&NGoodreads
Read an excerpt here!
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Salvation isn't as safe as it seems...

Deuce’s whole world has changed. Now living topside in a community called Salvation, she has a whole new set of problems. Down below, she was considered an adult, and she contributed to the whole. Now, topside, the people of Salvation think she’s a brat in need of training. She hates school, and she doesn’t fit in with the other girls. They’ve spent their lives learning to cook and sew–suitable woman’s work. Deuce only knows how to fight. To make matters worse, Fade keeps her at a distance, and the band of four has broken into fragments.

Stalker presses for a closer relationship, but Deuce sees him as a training partner, and she’s busy trying to find her place in Salvation. She refuses to accept that she’s wrong for being who she is, but tensions rise as she struggles against the status quo. Her feelings for Fade haven’t changed, but he seems not to want her around anymore. Confused and lonely, she starts looking for a way out.

Once she’s free from school for the year, Deuce pursues a chance to serve in the summer patrols–those responsible for making sure the growers and planters can work the fields without danger of Freak attack. It should have been routine, little fighting, but things have been changing on surface, just as they did below ground. The Freaks are smarter. They’re watching. Waiting. Planning. The monsters don’t intend to let Salvation survive, and it will take a girl like Deuce to turn the tide.

(Update 4/25/12. Posted originally on 3/20/12)
Okay, it's just the preview of the cover, but isn't it perfection? As the cover of Enclave was exactly right, capturing the grit and mostly underground/post-apocalyptic setting of the book, Outpost is the rough/rustic new life full of danger Deuce, Fade, & co. now have. I swoon for the horror of this series. And I may be grasping at straws, but if you notice, the nails on the Freak on the cover of Enclave are longer than the more human nails on the cover of Outpost. Is it a reflection on how beastial the Freaks were underground, and how much more sentient they are aboveground where they have a greater food supply, light, and fresh air? Am I reading too much into this?