First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
- Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
- Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
- Finally… reveal the book!
Got it? Okay let’s go! Here is the quote…
“‘You must meet the most interesting people on the gallows,’ Whitlaw Goddard said the the black-hooded man readying his noose.”
Do you know this one?
It just came out last month
It is a blend of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Have you guessed?
Yes? No?
Give up?
Here it is!
First Mage on the Moon
Summary from Goodreads:
Ella Pickering is drowning in debt. Once a Unity skymage trained to make aerial supply runs in the great war with the Ranneas Empire, following a crash she now uses a wheelchair and works gruelling shifts making magical weapons in the Unity workshops, thinking of better days.
One night Ella witnesses an experiment by engineer Jackan Grissom go awry. His device morphs into a crude rocket blasting skywards before falling into the war’s spell-ravaged No Man’s Land. But this inspires a dangerous dream: could such a device reach the moon – the forbidden home of the gods? Could they go and beg them to stop the war?
They will need help, but as more folk get involved in their blasphemous plot, can they keep it under wraps? Can magic get them to the moon? Or will their heresy lead them to the gallows?
I love that first line! How could you not continue reading to see what happened next? I just started this one yesterday and so far it has been pretty good. It has been getting some pretty good reviews, so hopefully it will continue to be a fun read.
What do you think? Have you heard about this book? Is it on your TBR? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time…
Confessions of a Serial Reader 