The Friday Face-Off: Grimdark

    

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:

Grimdark

I'm pretty excited about this week's theme because I really enjoy grimdark as a subgenre. As such, I've opted to share some covers from R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series, starting with the first book, The Darkness that Comes Before. I've read the first two books in this series so far and I find them incredibly fascinating. They aren't necessarily something I'd say are particularly fun reads, but I certainly find them entertaining and am curious to dive into the third book. But all that aside–let's check out some covers!

2005 US Paperback | 2008 German | 2007 Croatian

2008 US Paperback | 2005 Polish | 2009 Russian

2006 German | 2017 Russian | 2005 French

2009 French | 2020 Spanish | 2007 Romanian

My choice(s):

I really like a lot of these! My favorite is probably the 2008 US paperback version that I read. I also really like the 2006 German, 2009 Russian, and 2009 French editions! These are also all pretty creative this week and I think all have strengths going for them, although I can't say I like much about that Romanian edition, and it makes this book seem far more medieval than it is. The Spanish edition is really interesting with that eye illustration, too, haha. I'm intrigued! What do you think of these covers?