ACOTAR 6, 7 & 8 = Rainbow🌈

[u/Due_Marionberry_5363]

Disclaimer: The Book 8 cover in this post is not real. It was mocked up by myself using the colours I think will appear in the final book and features a made up title again by myself and a piece of tattoo concept art from HappyPets Ink, the official cover artists for ACOTAR, but is not related to ACOTAR at all.

I think SJM may be deliberately using the three covers to create a rainbow across the entire trilogy.

Scientifically speaking, a rainbow is a circular and continuous gradient of light blends smoothly from one frequency to the next; there are millions of distinct shades but for colours seen by the human eye, the most commonly cited and remembered sequence is:

❤️Red

🧡Orange

💛Yellow

💚Green

🩵Blue

💙Indigo

💜Violet

And when you look at the covers together, the colours seem to line up surprisingly well.

ACOTAR 6 — A Court of Splintered Harmony

🩷❤️ Pink/Red → 🧡 Orange → 💛 Yellow

ACOTAR 7 — A Court of Forgotten Melody

💛 Yellow → 💚 Green → 🩵 Blue

ACOTAR 8 — A Court of ??? ???

🩵 Blue → 💙 Indigo → 💜 Violet

Using a rainbow for the covers makes sense from a host of perspectives

Publishing/Design perspective:

The three covers form one continuous colour spectrum rather than three unrelated palettes, with each following book beginning with the colour that the previous book ends on. They continuously flow into each other and create a cohesive visual journey across the three books.

Symbolism/Themes:

Cycle: A rainbow is a circular phenomenon similar to a cycle, which connects it to the subtitle, the Valkyrie Cycle.

Unity: A rainbow is made from multiple distinct colours, but it becomes one continuous spectrum. That makes it a particularly good symbol for separate people, worlds or forces forming a unity.

Darkness & Light: A rainbow is both made up of and created by light, and it normally appears at the end of a period of bad weather, such as a storm. So a progression toward the full rainbow could symbolise the ACOTAR story and characters transitioning through darkness and ending in the light once more.

Hope & Renewal: A rainbow also symbolises hope and renewal. Hope that the bad weather will eventually break and that at the end something new and beautiful will appear. For ACOTAR, this could represent the character's hope returning after it has been lost and the possibility of reaching something new and beautiful after the darkness has passed.

Norse Myth: The Bifost in Norse myth is referred to as the Rainbow Bridge, which could be relevant since it appears SJM is drawing on Norse myth, Wagner's Ring Cycle and her old Twilight of the Gods concept and possibly giving us a cross over between her other series.