Friday Face-Off: Chinese New Year
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:
“Year of the Rat”
~ Chinese New Year
Mogsy’s Pick:
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Happy Lunar New Year! January 25, 2020 officially kicks off the Year of the Rat, which is especially important to me, because the Rat is my year 🙂 For a lot of Chinese families, this is probably THE most significant and biggest holiday of the year, and growing up, mine has always celebrated with lots of fireworks, catching up with friends and relatives, feasts and lots of color and brightness–in other words, not typically the things you’d find on book covers in the western publishing world featuring rats, which aren’t really the darlings of the animal world, I’m afraid. So today, in honor of Chinese New Year, I’ve decided to feature a book with covers that are inspired by Chinese culture instead.
And so, I give you The Poppy War, which is an incredible book, and I’m also glad to see it has some beautiful covers:
From left to right:
Harper Voyager (2018) – Bulgarian Edition (2019) – Indonesian Edition (2019)
German Edition (2020) – Polish Edition A (2020) – Polish Edition B (2020)
Winner:
So many great choices, but I think I gotta go with the Indonesian edition this week. So gorgeous, with the poppies in the foreground and the phoenix in the back.
But what do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
The longer I look the more I appreciate the Bulgarian edition. The font is rather awful, but the background quite gorgeous 🙂
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Haha, yeah the font is pretty drab but I kinda like the understated-ness…makes the cover image itself stand out more 🙂
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I like the Indonesian and Polish editions.
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Both are fantastic, and I think the Polish editions might be my second and third favorites.
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What a fabulous idea! They are ALLLL such beautiful covers, but I’ve completely lost my heart to that wonderful Polish cover, which is absolutely stunning. Happy Chinese New Year, Mogsy:))
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Agreed! Both Polish covers are quite beautiful. And thank you so much for the new year wishes 🙂
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Oh my, some beautiful covers. the Indonesian is without doubt my favourite and stood out for me immediately, the Polish version is also beautiful. What a fantastic choice – I’m so glad you went with the Chinese inspired idea – and Happy New Year to you 😀 – I was born year of the dragon – I think it suits me well! My husband is a monkey – quite literally.
Lynn 😀
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Yeah, I wanted to go with something more…festive! Which I knew I wasn’t going to find with rat covers 😀 And it is considered very lucky to be born in the year of the dragon! My older daughter is one too 😀
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So I’m torn between the Indonesian one and the Polish edition. I think they are equally great. Nice choice for this week’s topic.
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Agreed, I think The Indonesian cover and the two Polish covers are my top three!
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Wow, who knew there were so many covers for this book? I adore the one you chose, but I also love both Polish editions 😁
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Haha, I think many of the international editions only popped up in the last year or so 🙂
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That Indonesian cover is gorgeous. I also like the Polish ones (especially A) and the Harper Voyager one. They’re all great though!
Happy Lunar New Year!!
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Thank you! Happy year of the Rat!
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I like the Indonesian cover you choose and they way it portrays the theme of fire, and yet the first cover – the one on the copy I read – remains outstanding in its simplicity…. 🙂
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I own the first cover as well, though I’ve always thought it to be too “tame” for such a great book! But you also have a point about its simple elegance 🙂
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So many nice ones! I have to go with the first Polish one
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Of the two Polish covers, I think I like that one more too 🙂
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I love the cover you chose!
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Thanks, I think it’s pretty popular this week 😀
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🙂
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Wow, this one is so difficult. I like all the covers. I love the style of the Harper Voyager cover, and that’s the one I’m most familiar with. I also love the intensity and power of the Polish Edition A. But I suppose my favorite (at least at this moment, it may change) would be the German edition. It looks almost like watercolor to me, and in a style I very much enjoy. Great selection this week! I have this book and really need to get around to reading it.
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Nice pick. This is one series that has some amazing covers all around. I think it’s hard to pick a favorite for me.
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Honestly I still prefer Haper Voyager’s cover! Simple but elegant 😉
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I didn’t realize there were so many covers for this book!! I think my favourites the 2020 Polish one, it’s stunning 😍
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