This Cruel Design – Emily Suvada
Emily Suvada’s sequel to This Mortal Coil is coming in late October, and This Cruel Design continues Catarina Agatta’s battle against the Hydra epidemic. Though she believes the virus’ threat is contained at the end of This Mortal Coil, she soon receives news that this isn’t the case.
New cases of the virus are popping up, forcing her to reluctantly team up with her father to find a vaccine. But through all this, she also needs to find a way to prevent her father from reprogramming humanity. The problem is, her father is constantly ahead of her, and everything she tries leads to failure.
The cover designs for This Mortal Coil and This Cruel Design are both simplistic, though the intense colors make them pop. In particular, the bright blue of This Cruel Design definitely stands out on a bookshelf. And they both capture the difficulty in containing something — like a virus — very well. It’s impressive when an artist can represent an entire story with so few details, and that’s exactly what the cover art does here.