Friday Face-Off: Purple
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:
“As purple as the heather ”
~ a cover which is mostly PURPLE
Mogsy’s Pick:
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
One of my earliest experiences with the cyberpunk noir genre was Altered Carbon, a novel that takes place in a future where humans are implanted with a cortical stack which stores their consciousness including memories and personalities digitally. This information can be transmitted and downloaded to new bodies, called sleeves. So if a person dies, their stack can be recovered and resleeved or stored indefinitely, resulting in a kind of artificial immortality.
Thing is, only the very wealthy can afford to acquire replacement bodies on a continual basis. One of these people, Laurens Bancroft, is so rich that he even has remote storage that automatically backs up his stack every two days. When Bancroft dies of an apparent suicide, he was resleeved from the latest backup, which has no memory of what happened in the previous 48 hours. He doesn’t buy he killed himself and instead believes he was murdered, and hires our protagonist Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his case.
As with most highly regarded novels, this one has a ton of editions and different covers. I am only going to feature a selection of the cooler looking ones, and fortunately several of these fit today’s theme of “Mostly (Shades of) Purple”.
First row, from left to right: Tantor Audio (2005) – Del Rey (2006) – Hungarian (2006) Portuguese (2008)
Gollancz (2002) – Gollancz (2008) – German (2014) – Greek (2005)
Portuguese (2017) – Italian (2004) – French (2003) – Del Rey (2003)
Winner:
Oh boy, how to choose a winner, when there’s such a huge range of art styles to choose from? To be honest though, I don’t think I have a favorite, but there are a few interesting ones here for sure. In the end, it wasn’t a purple cover that jumped out at me; it was the dark and gritty, rust-colored and industrial-style look of the Portuguese (2017) edition that caught my eye. I certainly wouldn’t mind it as a poster on my wall.
What do you think? Do you have a favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
I probably like the Del Rey version the best, although the Gollancz 2008 and 2002 (and the German) appeal to me with the futuristic cityscape look.
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Those soft purple covers sure are pretty…plus I’m also a sucker for futuristic ‘scapes 🙂
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Both Del Reys are pretty cool, but I agree with your choice of the 2017 Portuguese cover.
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Yeah, of the Del Rey covers I actually prefer the 2003 – very futuristic thriller.
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There all kind of busy and I’m not sure I’d pick this book up but I like the Hungarian version for some reason. I know I’m drawn to purple so that may be it.
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Yeah, I like how “clean” that one is compared to the others. The purple skull/brain just draws the eye without any other distractions.
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I like your choice, and the first one from Tantor Audio as well: very moody… 🙂
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Yeah, I don’t generally prefer audio covers (especially Tantor ones because they’re typically awful, lol) but I have to say this one is quite nicely done 🙂
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Hmmm, I think the Italian
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That one’s cool! I like the art deco look.
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A fantastic, must-read book. I’m not crazy about any of the covers though.
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Yeah, I enjoyed it! I need to read the later ones 🙂
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First of all, how have I never heard of this book? I really like the cover you chose, I’m partial to warm colors😀
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It’s a really good book! And I’m with you, as much I like the color purple, I find I am more drawn to fiery warm oranges and reds 🙂
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I’ve also not heard of this book. Sounds very good though. Covers – bit difficult to choose one, I like your choice and I like the first one too – it’s a bit ‘crazy’ somehow.
Lynn 😀
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Yeah, the audio edition cover is shockingly great. I’m usually making fun of Tantor covers rather than praising them 😛
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What a fantastic choice:). I really loved Altered Carbon… My favourite is the Del Rey cover, which has been slightly varied for the Portugese, Italian and French editions – I’m a sucker for a beautiful cityscape.
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Me too, especially futuristic ones 🙂
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This is a tricky one, but I think I like your final choice best. It’s less difficult on the eyes because of the more subdued tones, but still has a lot going on. Lots of details to explore.
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Yeah, a lot of the designs are very busy. I think that’s why my second choice would probably be the Italian one with its clean lines and simple shades. I kinda like the Del Rey 2003 too, it’s a very flattering pic of the main character 😛
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