The Friday Face-Off: Serpentine

Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme at Books by Proxy. Join us every Friday as we pit cover against cover, and publisher against publisher, to find the best artwork in our literary universe. You can find a list of upcoming topics at Lynn's Books.

This week's topic is:
Serpentine

So I think a lot of us have seen the ever-present book snake that has graced a lot of covers over the past year or so, which makes this a particularly apt and relevant topic for this week! My immediate thought for this week went to Kacen Callender's Queen of the Conquered and King of the Rising, which are stunning, but since those books only have one cover each I figured I would just include a variety of books that feature some form of a lovely snake friend, and I'll try to through in some not-as-popular ones, as well. 

Side note: I used to not be a big fan of snakes, but over the years I've been slowly warming up to them, I think. Have any of you ever taken those Patronus quizzes to see what yours is? I did it twice and both times I got venomous snakes (black adder and black mamba!?) so I figured I should give them a bit more attention. ;)

Now, let's look at snakes!

2019 Orbit | 2020 Orbit | 1997 St. Martin's Press

2019 Flatiron Books | 2018 Bloomsbury 20th Anniversary | 1999 Scholastic

2017 Custom House | 2012 Sceptre | 2018 Canongate Books

My choice(s):

I love a lot of these (especially Snake Ropes), but something about this cover King of the Rising always makes me want to double take and stare at it a bit longer. Something about the white snake (even though I tend to prefer black snakes I think?) against the dark grey background and layered above Loren is just so captivating to me. Really beautiful cover design! I really like Queen of the Conquered as well since it's the same general style, but I just love the colors in this one more, plus I really liked following Loren in these books. 

What cover(s) do you like the most!?