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: “Live on the saddle. Die on the hog.” – A cover featuring riders.
I went way back for this week’s pick, since I couldn’t come up with any recent reads that fit this category. Hey, Lynn doesn’t specify what the riders are riding, right? (Of course my mind immediately goes to horses) Then I thought of a horse-like animal that would be perfect: the thestrals that Harry and his friends ride in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And being Harry Potter there are so many covers to choose from, so I’ve decided to only feature covers that show the characters riding thestrals! Take a look at some of these:
Scholastic 2013 edition | Dutch edition 2013
Bloomsbury (English) edition | Swedish edition 2004
Danish edition 2004 | Romanian edition 2017
Japanese edition | Danish edition 2015
I absolutely love the Scholastic 15th anniversary edition, but I also love the Bloomsbury, so my favorite is:
I love this book and it has some amazing covers. I love your choice and also the Dutch edition.
Lynn 😀
This is one of my favorite HP books as well:-)
I used to own the Dutch version (before I switched to English) so that cover is taking me waaaay back. I loved it.
Oh cool! I’d love to own some of these foreign (to me) editions:-)
That’s my favorite too! Although I do love the expression on the thestrals on the Swedish edition. Great choice of covers this week,
Those Swedish thestrals are scary!
They’re all so nice! But I have to agree with your choice.
It’s very colorful, which is one reason I love it:-)
Your choice and the Dutch edition are the best, both for the image and the colors: that sunset in both backgrounds is the perfect complement for the darkness of the flying steeds… 🙂
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I agree, I love the sunset color, it’s striking!
I love that you chose Order of the Phoenix for this one, the thestrals are so fascinating to me. I think my top pick would the same one you chose, and my second would be the Scholastic 2013 edition. The thestral on the Swedish edition looks a bit angry, haha. Nice choice!
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Yes, that thestral on the Swedish cover really scares me too:-)
Those covers are awesome – I’m now very aware of how boring the covers on our books are! This is an excellent book for this week’s theme, Tammy and I completely agree with your choice – it’s a really lovely cover.
You have to think these publishers have HUGE budgets for cover design:-)
Ooh great picks! I love the Scholastic one, so that would be my pick, but the Bloomsbury one is nice too!
Happy Friday!!
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Thanks Greg, it’s amazing how many good covers there are for these books:-)
Excellent choice. I’d love to have some of these framed!
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Oh me too!
Great choice of book, I’m also holding onto the Harry Potter books for some of the future topics which may be tougher, as it just seems there’s a HP cover for every occasion 😀 My favorite is the first one, I just love the panoramic view, but I like yours too!
There is so much going on in these covers, I can see why you’d be able to use any HP cover for many of the themes:-)
I would have to go with the Swedish cover! I love how terrifying-looking the Thestrals are!
Ha ha they are terrifying, right? Maybe a little TOO terrifying??
I like the Scholastic best! Although the one you like would be my second choice.
I really like the Scholastic cover too:-)
I think I like the Dutch or Swedish cover, but they are all kind of cool!
I was surprised that I found so many with thestrals, a pleasant surprise:-)
Whoa! I didn’t even know there were versions of the cover that showed the thestrals, but these are awesome! I definitely agree with your fave! The colors and the artwork are amazing.
I hadn’t seen most of these covers either, I was pleasantly surprised:-)
All awesome! Does Buckbeak count from PoA? I’d also pick The Scorpio Races. 🙂
Ha ha definitely!
I do love the scholastic 2013 one though. The colour tone of it is so relaxing hahah
I agree, the colors are moody as well, which I like especially since the story is so grim at times.
Great choice! I almost picked Prisoner of Azkaban because he is riding a griffin, but I went with Eragon and Dragon riding instead. Like you said Lynn didn’t specify what they were riding!
I think I like the Swedish edition 2004 best! The colors are great and the thestrals is creepy and cool at the same time! My second fav is Scholastic 2013.
There are actually quite a lot of “riders” stories that don’t involve horses:-)