The Friday Face-Off is a meme originally created by Books by Proxy and now hosted over at Lynn’s Books. The idea is to compare the different covers of a book with each week being a certain theme.

This week’s cover theme is a cover featuring a longboat: “Odin, Odin, send the wind to turn the tide.”

The book I have found for this theme is Frans G. Bengtsson’s The Long Ships.

Cover A:

Cover B:

Cover C:

Cover D:

Cover E:

Cover F:

Cover G:

Cover H:

And the winner is… cover D!

As soon as I started looking through the various editions for this book, cover D had me hook, line and sinker. The dark, moody sky and the wild sea convey the image of the Vikings striking out so wonderfully. The pop of blood red in the sail offers just a dash of colour in a visually striking cover.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my winner, or does one of the others work better for you? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s theme is a cover featuring a school: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”