Narnia Bloggin': The Curious Case of the Odd Omnibus

In my previous Narnia Bloggin' post, I talked myself into buying the $75 deluxe edition of The Chronicles of Narnia omnibus (7 books in 1). I had planned on getting it from Barnes & Noble as I had a $5 credit, but then my price comparison browser plugin alerted me that Amazon had it for $50.60! $25 off is nothing to sneeze at, so from Amazon I got it. 

It's beautiful, and looked just like the one I looked at in Barnes & Noble, except... the fore edges are not even. There are two furrows, one deep and one medium, and a few smaller shallow ones as well, instead of just a flat expanse of page edges like with most books. This matters because the page edges are painted, and the furrows make the design look bad! I have never seen a book with those kinds of page furrows. Additionally, the solid red top and bottom page edges have big white scratches or scuffs where the red has been scratched or scuffed off. 

Here is the Instagram video I made of the imperfections. 

 

You cannot tell how uneven this is from this picture. Trust me, you could tell in person.

Profile view of the uneven fore edge/page edges. The deepest furrow is on the right.

scratch, bottom of book

scuff, top of book. note the glued pages

I didn't think much of Amazon's packaging of my book; it was just in a box with a plastic large-bubble (the kind the size of 3x5 cards) sheet for padding and otherwise left loose to bang around inside the box with the other thing that was in there. Maybe that's where the scuffs came from? But there was one on each side (top and bottom) of the book...

Naturally I turned to the Amazon reviews. I did a search in the reviews with the keyword "deluxe". Four reviews turned up about the deluxe omnibus edition. Turns out, I'm not the only one disappointed in the quality of my omnibus. 

"See full review" just takes you to the specific webpage for the review. I promise all text is included

Worth noting that they no longer print books with non-acid-free paper; it's standard

I asked for an exchange, marking the copy I received as damaged. A new one arrived, and while it didn't have the scuffs/scratches my first copy did, this one had, if anything, even more uneven page edges with furrows. Also, the dust jacket had come off at some point and been folded down wrong and had its corners dog-eared. (I did not take any pictures.) Clearly, Amazon is able to sell this deluxe omnibus edition at such a low price (comparatively) because all of the copies are lightly damaged in some way. What a shame. I think I'm going to go back to my local Barnes & Noble and inspect their copy/ies in person, and if it looks ok, buy it for full price. Bookshop.org currently has the deluxe omnibus for $69.90 but I'm too afraid to chance it. Ah well.