Friday Face-Off: Casino
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework”
~ a cover featuring a CASINO
Mogsy’s Pick:
The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White
When I think of casinos, I immediately also think of Las Vegas. Ah, one of my favorite cities in the world! Unfortunately, while I’ve certainly read plenty of books set in Vegas, I find that not too many of them actually show casinos on their covers, and finding books with multiple editions for me to feature in this meme makes things even tougher.
Which is why this week we’re going to keep things simple with a head-to-head between only two covers. The Incrementalists is a book I read several years ago when it first came out in 2013 so admittedly my memory’s a bit hazy on the details, but from what I recall, the story follows a secret society whose members cheat death by sharing lives and memories going back tens of thousands of years. Their ongoing mission: to make the world a better place, a little bit at a time through a process called “meddlework”, which they achieve through influencing others by nudging them gently towards a certain inclination. And yes, the story takes place in Las Vegas. I haven’t thought about this book in a while, but lately it’s been on my radar again, due to the recent release of the sequel The Skill of Our Hands which came out earlier in January.
Now let’s check out these two covers:
2013 Tor Hardcover (left) vs. 2014 Tor Fantasy Paperback (right)
Winner:
At first glance, it’s easy to think that this contest just might end up in a tie, since the two covers share so many similarities. For one thing, they both have the same color scheme, and two, both of them depict the ubiquitous casinos of the Las Vegas Strip in their backgrounds. Push comes to shove though, I’m going to have to go with the original hardback cover. The abstractness of it is more interesting to me, versus the paperback cover which looks like the movie poster for some teen dystopian movie. I blame the apocalyptic orange.
What do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
I can’t say either is a fav
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Yeah, slim pickings this week 😀
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they’re quite good, both, but yes I think I would have chosen the same
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It’s a more interesting cover.
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Neither one would greatly excite me if I was book browsing but I’d go with the paperback I think. Tough subject this week!
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The paperback does have a more “commercial fiction” look that would draw my eye. But yeah, this week was tough, I didn’t have much choice from the books I’ve read.
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I concur with your thought process whole heartedly. The second one looks like a movie poster indeed!
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Yeah, I wonder if Marketing thought a “movie poster” feel would help the book sell better!
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Yes, this seems like a tough week, especially if you’re looking for genre books that deal with casinos. For some reason I keep thinking of the Christie Charish Owl books, didn’t they have a casino setting? But no casino on the cover.
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It was really hard! And yes, the the first Owl book had scenes in Vegas, and it was actually one of the first covers I checked – sadly no, it doesn’t feature a casino…and the book only has that one cover. D:
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I agree with your choice: this cover gives a feeling of… motion, of things that cannot be stopped. 🙂
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Yeah, and the constellation (I’m guessing those are supposed to be stars) is a nice touch!
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Agreed with you on every point! The first caught my eye immediately, but I glazed right over the second.The first also suggests more of a speculative element, whereas the second…not really? Lol
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Agreed! I didn’t even think of that but you’re right. The second one could be contemporary, mystery, drama? Nothing about it indicates it’s SFF.
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