The Friday Face-Off was created by Books by Proxy, where each week bloggers can showcase books with covers centered around a weekly theme. You can visit Lynn’s Books for a list of upcoming themes. Join in the fun each Friday by finding a book whose cover is based on the theme!
This week’s theme: “A little soil to make it grow.” – A cover featuring seeds/spores.
This week was tough, but I found a great example after a lot of searching. Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation has just been made into a movie (which I have yet to see), but it all started with this book, a strange and suspenseful tale of a group of scientists who are trying to figure out why previous groups of explorers to Area X have disappeared. This was one of my favorite books of 2014, and if you haven’t read VanderMeer, I highly recommend you check out his large body of work. Take a look at the AMAZING covers (some of which actually have spores on them!):
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (US) | Varrak (Estonian)
Indonesian 2018 | Korean 2017
Fourth Estate 2015 | Fourth Estate Kindle Edition
Chinese 2015 | Chinese 2016
So many great covers, and they are all so DIFFERENT. Ultimately, the cover that keeps catching my eye is:
Wow… wow, wow, wow. Just… wow! WHAT stupendously fabulous covers! I’ve seen the one featured by Proxy, but I had no idea that lucky old Jeff has such wonderful book covers for allll the editions. There isn’t a single dud amongst this lot! And yes – I’m with you. It makes my set of covers look REALLY tired and very average.
I agree, they are all really good, and best of all, I think they nail the feeling of what the story is like.
I absolutely agree:))
All beautiful covers. I do agree with your pick though. It’s an intriguing image.
That cover does a great job conveying the strangeness of this story!
Wow – I’ve not seen that cover before. It’s brilliant. This was the first book that sprung to mind with this week’s theme but I’ve already used this book so wanted to come up with something different. It’s a great book for this topic though and there are such a lot of covers. It was more difficult that I thought this week – I had a couple of books in mind but sometimes when you go to look there’s only one cover.
Lynn 😀
That happened to me too, where I think of a perfect book but it’s just too new to have a lot of covers already.
So beautiful covers!
Eline recently posted…Jade City by Fonda Lee | Review
Yes, they are beautiful, I agree:-)
Can’t say I’ve read any of these, but I do want to try Annihilation.
It’s really good, but very strange:-)
Those are some bizarre covers! Tho I think my favorites are Fourth Estate Kindle Edition and Chinese 2016!
Brittany recently posted…Ready Player One (Movie – No Spoilers)
It’s a bizarre story, so I think the covers really do it justice:-)
I like the Indonesian and Korean covers the best. 🙂
I like those as well, so many good ones:-)
I like your choice, mostly because it reminds me of another intriguing cover for the same author, the one for “Borne” 🙂
Maddalena@spaceandsorcery recently posted…Short Story Review: ADRIFT, by Terry Burlison
Oooh Borne has some great covers as well! I’m hoping I can use it in a future Face-Off:-)
I agree. That copy of Annihilation is striking!
I think it’s the yellow cover, it really drew me in:-)
Ooh so many good covers for this one! I actually like the first one (it’s grown on me as I wasn’t crazy about it at first?), but I like the Indonesian one too. I like how it looks like she’s breaking through something. I kinda like the Estonian one, I keep going back and forth on that. 🙂
Greg recently posted…Why Dragons Are Like Cats
It’s hard to pick, they all work in their own way:-)
I had to unschedule my Friday Face-off because I had an interview planned, but this was the book I would have gone with too (because it was so tough to find anything else!) The one you picked as winner is one I don’t think I’ve seen though, but I love it! Very eye catching colors.
Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum recently posted…An Interview with RJ Barker, Author of The Wounded Kingdom Trilogy
I honestly couldn’t think of anything else for this week, although other bloggers came up with some great ideas! But this book definitely has a bunch of cool covers!
I’m so used to the Farrar, Straus & Giroux (US) one, but wow at all the Asian ones. They are soooo intriguing! 😮
Lashaan Balasingam recently posted…The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
I really like the Asian ones as well. I love when books get cool and different covers from all over the world!
I didn’t enjoy VanderMeer’s writing style in Annihilation and DNF it but I could see it was a great story . I may give it another try and finish it. The covers are absolutely awesome. I love the same one you did!
Daniela Ark recently posted…What’s Scheming? – Wrapping up quarter one!
VanderMeer definitely isn’t for everyone, he’s got that “new weird” thing going on, I just happen to love his style:-)
I don’t know ANYTHING about this book nor have I heard of it, but if I saw the US cover I would immediately have picked it up! This is gorgeous work.
The book is fantastic, if you enjoy “weird fantasy.”!
This is a hard topic. I don’t think I know of any covers with seeds unless maybe you count pomegranate seeds that are inside the pomegranate, haha. But these are great! I agree, the Indonesian 2018 one is the best!
Kristen @ Metaphors and Moonlight recently posted…Book Review: School for Psychics (School for Psychics Book 1) by K.C. Archer
I’m sure a pomegranate seed would count!