Indeed it almost appears to exhibit the "bite" of letterpress. The silver titling is embossed into the cloth (not just printed on top), as is the key design.The printing quality is excellent - perfectly even in tone and pleasingly sharp and precise. It feels as though it will be hard wearing. Before I opened the books and discovered that fact, my first impression was how smart and well-finished the rather tactile cloth binding is. I have just taken delivery of the "Locked Room" set which I note is also printed and bound by C&C Offset. Not to discriminate against the Chinese, but because I doubt that the quality will be up to par with the European bookbinders and printers FS have used so far. If they really decide to go this way for the sake of producing more cheaply, I would wish for a mention of this on their website since I'd want to avoid such titles. I'm admittedly a bit sensitive to this kind of thing, but I got trouble with my eyes and lungs just from looking through the book. I sold it and got myself the older version of the book, sans smell and with a nicer binding and title illustrations. The only FS book I ever received with a similar problem was one of their collectables. The fact that the buyer who originally complained about the Chinese Moby Dick on another thread mentioned a chemical smell sounds less than trustworthy when it comes to quality. I would expect something similar here: No disastrous quality, but probably just not quite as good as what we're used to. The quality was good, but simply not quite as good as the US books had been. A pretty good example to me was a US artist who had her first few art books made in the US (excellent quality), the latest one in China, because they were a lot cheaper compared to the risen US prices. But: As a rule, western companies producing in China go for a cheaper price before quality, which considering shipping, customs and taxes on imports might not end up (that much) cheaper after all if you want the same quality you'd get in the EU, for example. Of course you can get some really nice quality items from China, at times better and cheaper than here.
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