Friday, November 18, 2022

The Friday Face-Off: Swords & Sorcery

  


Friday Face Off New

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:
Sword & Sorcery

This week I did something a little different and chose a book that I actually haven't read yet: Legend (The Drenai Saga #1) by David Gemmell! I see this book recommended quite a lot in relation to being a very classic sword and sorcery fantasy, so I figured it'd be a great fit for this week (and it might encourage me to finally get around to reading it!), and there are a ton of editions to look through.  Let's have a look at some of the covers. 

Legend (The Drenai Saga, #1) Légende Legend (Drenai Tales, #1)
1994 Ballantine | 2000 French | 1986 Century

Belägringen Легенда (Сага за Дренай, #1) 大衛·蓋梅爾之傳奇
2001 Swedish | 2007 Bulgarian | 2014 Chinese

Légende (Cycle Drenaï, #1) Legenda (Drenai Saga, #1) Legenda (Drenain tarut, #1)
2010 French | 1996 Polish | 2003 Finnish 

Legenda (The Drenai Saga, #1) Die Legende (Die Drenai-Saga, #1) Легенда (The Drenai Saga, #1)
2010 Polish | 1997 German | 2003 Russian

My choice(s):
I think a lot of these are really fun and have a very 'classic fantasy' feel to them–which could be good or bad, depending on your preferences, haha. I'm always drawn to designs like the Bulgarian one, and I appreciate the more simplistic styles of the French and Finnish editions. That being said, it think all of these have a lot of really fun elements!


Which covers do you like most?

3 comments:

  1. I like the Polish cover, maybe it's the perspective of kind of looking up at the scene? But yes, lots of really good covers😁

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  2. Yes, I would definitely agree on the "classic fantasy" part! I was gonna say, how old is this book? But now I see there's a 1986 edition - makes sense!

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  3. This looks VERY sword and sorcery! Hard t pick a favorite but I really like that Finnish edition a lot.

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