The Friday Face-Off: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a new weekly meme hosted by Books by Proxy. Join us every Friday as we pit cover against cover, and publisher against publisher, to find the best artwork in our literary universe.

---

The Friday Face-Off: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

asdf

asdf

a

asdfsdfasdf
VS.

asdf

asdf

asdf

asdf

---

 Harper Collins – US Cover

Cover art by Will Staehle

◊  ◊  ◊

Harper Collins (UK) – UK Cover

Cover art by (?)

---

The Friday Face-Off Winner is…

Harper Collins – US Cover; Cover art byWill Staehle

With this week theme being a cover that depicts something dealing with death, the idea of zombies or something with a battlefield did come to mind immediately, but when then I was causing through my book and saw Pirate Latitudes. Personally, when I think of pirate, death isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but one of the first thing does is their plan – which has a skull and cross bones!

I bet 99% of pirate novels have either that flag or a ship on the cover. I don’t think either symbol always beats over the other, but in this case, I like the skull and cross bones.

It’s a pretty basic cover, but I like how the flag symbol waves with the water, as if it were a part of it; I like how Crichton’s name is right on the horizon of the water; and with the war color and the border design, it gives a feeling of the carribbevn already.

I do like the UK cover, with the color scheme, and map faded over the clouds/lightning storm…. but the cover makes me think is just “another one” of those thrillers you buy at a pharmacy store or at the airport. Nothing about the cover makes me thinks the story will have anything special about it.

Which cover do you think is the best?

-DJ