Friday Face-Off: Mid-Series Cover Change
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:
~ a MID-SERIES COVER CHANGE
Mogsy’s Pick:
Gunnie Rose by Charlaine Harris
I wanted to feature a fantasy series for our first Friday Face-Off of Wyrd & Wonder 2021, so this week I’ve decided to go with Gunnie Rose by Charlaine Harris, which recently experienced a mid-series cover change for its US hardcover editions.
Here’s what the original HCs for An Easy Death (book 1) and A Longer Fall (book 2) looked like, from Gallery/Saga Press:
But when the Saga Press/Gallery first edition hardcover of the third book The Russian Cage came out, they changed up the look entirely. Later, for the paperback edition release of A Longer Fall, they also created a new cover for it to match:
Winner:
I’m so torn on this one! First off, I adored the first edition hardback cover of An Easy Death when it originally came out, because it looked so interesting, dramatic, and just all around badass. So you can imagine my disappointment when the HC edition of A Longer Fall was first revealed, and that cover just looked so bland in comparison.
Skip forward to the first edition hardcover release of A Russian Cage though, and it appears they decided to do away with the painted realistic look all together, opting for a bolder, more stylized motif featuring a central silhouette. I was initially skeptical, but with the reissued edition of the paperback version of A Longer Fall, at least I can appreciate the consistency the new style has brought to the series, and I do like the choice of colors.
Still, my OCD tends to flare up whenever a series changes up its covers partway through, because I just get this massive urge to put everything in order and make it all look uniform.
But what do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
I like the original covers better, particularly the one you showcased at the end: that stormy sky with lightning is nothing short of amazing!
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Right?! I love that background.
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I agree, it’s a very jarring thing when a series changes cover designs partway through. With these, though I can appreciate many elements of the latter covers, I do tend to prefer the first ones.
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Yeah, if I have a whole series on a shelf, I prefer it if the books all looked the same and were the same size, etc. 😛
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This is a great example, because all three covers are different, lol. I loved the cover of An Easy Death, I thought it suited the story really well. (Let’s not even talk about the hardcover A Longer Fall) But I do like the new Saga editions, the design is punchy and makes me want to read the books. It will be interesting to see what they do with the next book!
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I know, the covers are all over the place with this. Maybe that was part of the decision to redo the whole design for the third book? Because they went back to redesigned the paperback for the second book too!
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Kind if like A longer fall
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I like the Easy Death cover too. The Longer Fall one is a nice portrait but not as badass as that first one. I wonder why the gun is hidden and if that somehow relates to the story.
I don’t mind the new covers. They look like cool posters, but I’d be so annoyed if I had this set because the style from the first two to the new ones is so different.
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Yeah, the first cover is pure badass! I agree the second one isn’t bad and it’s actually a great portrait, but side by side you can really see the difference 🙂
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Definitely. I loved the original cover and not sure at all why they didn’t continue with that style and I was in fact really disappointed when the second cover came out – definitely bland and I wouldn’t have given it a second glance to be honest.
Lynn 😀
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Maybe they couldn’t get the same artist, because it seems there was a slight change from book 1 and 2 as well. Maybe the change was ultimately made to make all the books uniform from here on out?
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