So I finally
finally got my hands on
My Husband & I Sleep in a Coffin volume 1, two whole months after release. I have no idea what was going on but no UK booksellers had it in stock. Blackwells sold it on their website, but noted that delivery cost included delivery to the UK. Forbidden Planet also seemed to sell it, but they had it listed for sale before it was even released without listing it as a pre-order, so I'm thinking their website is just poorly set up. Even Amazon UK didn't have any, so you know it's serious when the bookshop killer can't get a book.
Anyway, I have it now, though I won't be able to read it yet, as I'm in the middle of Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know (which continues to be awesome), & I'm even stalled on that because my free time right now is taken up by Whispers of Fate & Powerwash Simulator 2, & before that it was Horizon Forbidden West taking up my time. My memory is shit & I'm not about to confuse myself by juggling too many sets of characters at once, so any commentary on the quality of the text itself & how it compares to the unofficial translation I'd checked out will have to wait.
But the actual physical book is right there in front of me. I can see it & touch it. And I have some thoughts on the quality & how it compares to previous releases I own. And hoo boy those thoughts are not good.
For reference I am using the 3 MXTX novels (I grabbed the 1st volumes of each for maximum fairness). I also have The Husky & His White Cat Shizun (which I hated, but that's not the point. Since I haven't got around to selling it yet, I have it available).
Cover
The MXTX book covers all have a matte background with glossy characters & foreground details, spine detail, as well as glossy title & author name text (SVSSS also has glossy panels on the back showing key characters). MH&ISiaC has a fully matte cover with just glossy title & author name text, & spine detail. I was ready to shake my head in disappointment, but this was the point where I remembered I still had 2ha stashed away in a box, so I dug that out & found it also only had the glossy effect on the cover text, so it's not a super new thing & I'm guessing 7S did the glossy detailing in an early blaze of enthusiasm before deciding to tone things down a bit. TBH, it's not a big deal & I can see how it was probably a hassle figuring out which details got the emphasis.
What is new & I am going to complain about, is that the cover no longer wraps around the book. The spine is solid black. And considering the blurb is in a box with a solid background, the artwork is way too covered up. (Technically 2ha also has a solid background box for the blurb, but it allowed details of the cover art to encroach into it, wrapping the text around this.) They did still have the full cover art just inside, but still. The cover lacks the little inner flaps too.
Title Font
This isn't necessarily reflective of any overall quality decline, because the various series all have their own title font designs, but this is... A Choice. It's giving shitty steampunk YA fantasy. Additionally this font is also used on the spine, unlike with previous books, where there was a standard font used, which allowed some uniformity in design across the various books while letting them have their own identity in the unique cover art that was visible on the spine.
Also, the pinyin title is no longer visible on the cover, or even on the title page (though that at least includes the title in hanzi). If you want to find what the book is called in Chinese without being able to read Chinese, you have to check the publishing details page. It's also in the pronunciation guide, but it doesn't tell you it's the title. I figured it was as I know this is standard with 7S releases, but I can see a newbie picking this book up in a bookshop out of curiosity & being confused.
Pages
The pages are so damn thin! You can see text, decorative details, & artwork through the page they're printed on! This isn't helped by the decorative details at the beginning of each chapter & at the top corners of each page being super think, elaborate, & printed with extra dark black ink (also printing the title on a blank page in between each chapter, in case you forget what you're reading, even though as with other 7S books, the title is at the top of each left-hand page, with the chapter title on the right), whereas previous books they made the chapter headers grey, kept the page decorations to thin lines. 2ha used little dog icons at the start of each chapter which are quite dark, but they were small, & the paper was decently thick.
And they want 18 bloody quid for this! I was fine paying the cost of the books because they had such a premium feel. This does not feel premium.
I really hope some of the lack of quality (the page thinness) is a side effect of whatever it was that caused supply shortages of this book, & they had to be less choosy about materials used, but I'm not sure I'm that optimistic.
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