What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

I am delighted by obscure passions, no matter how unusual. During the war, I was once holed up in a shepherd’s cottage, listening for the enemy to come up the hillside, when the shepherd launched into an impassioned diatribe on the finer points of sheep breeding that rivaled any sermon I have ever heard in my life. By the end, I was nodding along and willing to launch a crusade against all weak, overbred flocks, prone to scours and fly-strike, crowding out the honest sheep of the world.

Love this! Starts out telling then pivots to showing in a really engaging manner. Even better, the narrator mentally circles back to the passionate shepherd at least once more in the story.

It’s cold and poor and if you don’t die from falling in a hole or starving to death, a wolf eats you.

Love the way the rule of three is subverted -- we have both a crescendo and a diminuendo embedded in it, too. This is a low-key firework of a sentence.

People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it’s generally cheaper to obtain.

This is just pitch-perfect worldly ennui.

Falling asleep quickly, whenever you have the chance, is the third thing you learn in the army. (The first thing you learn is to keep your mouth shut and let the sergeants blunt their teeth on the people who can’t. The second thing is to never pass up a chance to piss.)

Such a nice & believable encapsulation of "things soldiers know."

There were three veterans at that table, battle-scarred soldiers who had served their countries honorably in more than one war … and all three of us screamed like small children and recoiled in horror.

THIS is how you describe something truly awful -- don't say "squamous" and "rugose" and "unspeakable," but instead show your characters reacting to it. Nicely handled.