Opening Week: Breaking the "Rules"

I recently started following a new group writer blog, Kill Zone, featuring a bunch of thriller writers. They've recently had a series of posts critiquing first pages submitted by their readers. I thought this a cool idea, and it inspired me to do my own series of posts on openings, in this case from my own novels, giving some commentary on what I was trying to do.

First up is from Broken Crescent.

Long after the great and terrible battles, long after the world had been broken by the forces...