Hooked By A Line

[Sarah]

I love that one for All Systems Red :)

[Trike]

In the nighttime heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality. - Ringworld

It would have been far easier for Har Bateen to take over the world if he had had a cold. - The Return of Nathan Brazil (Saga of the Well World #4)

Katie had been on the walls of the Mount for two hours, leaning against the Earth, when St. George dropped out of the sky wearing a leather flight jacket. - Ex-Heroes

How strange, that such an insignificant little world should come to matter so much. - The Uplift War

I'm pretty much fucked. - The Martian

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Aerulan wrote: "Martha Wells has a several that I really like.

The Wizard Hunters
"It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict o..."

LOL! I have All Systems Red on my TBR, it sounds just like my kind of story.

CBRetriever wrote: "Allison wrote: "Oh wow, CB, that's a great one! I admire it for its hook as much as its exemplary grammar."

Steven Brust is an excellent writer and I love his Vlad Taltos series especially as the ..."

I have more Brust on my list, too. I think he's a wonderful writer. I'll have to try to get him to the front of the line sooner than later.

[AndrewP]

Trike wrote: "Dj wrote: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)"

A pretty bright blue! Sigh. Such a lovely day."

LOL.. just what I was thinking. It was a good line back then but pretty much irrelevant today.

[Trike]

Just started reading The Fifth Season, which starts off with this corker: "Let's start with the end of the world, shall we?"

The second line: "Get it over with and move on to more interesting things."

[Cheryl]

Oh wow; that's good.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

loooooove that opener.

[Trike]

“Turns out that when you kill a god, people want to talk to you.” - Hounded

[Rachel]

So if there’s a prologue AND a prelude before a first chapter..which really counts as the first line!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

The one with the best hook ;)

[Bruce]

Trike wrote: "“Turns out that when you kill a god, people want to talk to you.” - Hounded"

That's good!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I don't know that I'd say I was hooked, but I laughed at the first line of this month's read Six of Crows:

"Joost had two problems: the moon and his moustache."

[Jonas]

'Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.' -A Certain Slant of Light

[Kristin B.]

Allison wrote: "I don't know that I'd say I was hooked, but I laughed at the first line of this month's read Six of Crows:

"Joost had two problems: the moon and his moustache.""

I also just laughed! That is a great line. Can't wait to get into that book. I hope I have time this month.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Jonas, that is a good one :)

[V.W.]

Sinister Barrier

"SWIFT death awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking," mused Professor Peder Bjornsen."

[Dj]

Trike wrote: "“Turns out that when you kill a god, people want to talk to you.” - Hounded"

Such a fun series. I still have giggles when I think of an Irish Wolfhound going around calling himself Oberon Khan.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

V.W. wrote: "Sinister Barrier

"SWIFT death awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking," mused Professor Peder Bjornsen.""

There are so many things I didn't expect in this sentence. XD

[Trike]

A book I received via Goodreads giveaway a few years ago, Revolution World, has this opening line:

"Sometimes Lady Luck's idea of girlish decorum is to pull on a pair of jackboots and frog march you towards the jaws of destiny."

It doesn't quite live up to that, but it's a killer hook. It also has a great blurb.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Trike wrote: "A book I received via Goodreads giveaway a few years ago, Revolution World, has this opening line:

"Sometimes Lady Luck's idea of girlish decorum is to pull on a pair of jackboots a..."

Holy cats that's a good opening line. Please post the blurb in the blurb chat... or I will. I've done it before.

[Donald]

Allison wrote: "I don't know that I'd say I was hooked, but I laughed at the first line of this month's read Six of Crows:

"Joost had two problems: the moon and his moustache.""

That's awesome! :D

It was already on my TBR when our library gets its copy in, but now I'm looking forward to it that little bit more.

[Dj]

"This book is predominantly concerned with making money, and from its pages a reader may learn much about the character and literary integrity of the authors."

While maybe not the best opening line ever, it does have the bonus of being honest. This is the opening from the Prologue for:

[Joseph]

Jonas wrote: "'Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.' -A Certain Slant of Light"

Nice.

[Beth]

"The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.)"
- Spindle's End

"There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name."
- Haroun and the Sea of Stories

"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree."
- Hogfather

"I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother's apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage."
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

those are lovely, Beth!

[Peggy]

Clearly there are no Harry Dresden fans in the house:

"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault."
-Blood Rites, Jim Butcher

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Peggy wrote: "Clearly there are no Harry Dresden fans in the house:

"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault."
-Blood Rites, Jim Butcher"

HA! I forgot that one. I remember cracking up.

[Trike]

From my previous thread (on another network, as they say on talk shows):

"It is said, in Imardin, that the wind has a soul, and it wails through the narrow city streets because it is grieved by what it finds there." - The Magicians' Guild

"The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death; he could hear them squealing as only happy children do." - Wool Omnibus

"The shadow of death passed through Cornwall, Nebraska, but it was such a nice day that nobody noticed." - A War Of Shadows

"The spacelift rose from the Pacific, climbing the cords of anthrax bacteria." - The Highest Frontier

"Not a day goes by that the post does not bring me at least one letter from a young person (or sometimes one not so young) who wishes to follow in my footsteps and become a dragon naturalist." - A Natural History of Dragons

"Digging graves is hell on a manicure, but I was taught good vampires clean up after every meal." - Red-Headed Stepchild

"The little man in the tweed jacket didn't look like a bomb." - Lilith: A Snake in the Grass

"Like anyone who ever attended a public high school, I first considered becoming a supervillain during a mandatory assembly on the dangers of peer pressure." - Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel

[Trike]

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck." - Feed

"The first thing you find you when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say." - The Knife of Never Letting Go

[Kristin B.]

I just started Borne and the first line is pretty interesting.

"I found Borne on a sunny gunmetal day when the giant bear Mord came roving near our home."

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Kristin B. wrote: "I just started Borne and the first line is pretty interesting.

"I found Borne on a sunny gunmetal day when the giant bear Mord came roving near our home.""

That is pretty good. I want to know what the second sentence is!

[Kristin B.]

Allison wrote: "
That is pretty good. I want to know what the second sentence is! "

Not quite as good.

"To me, Borne was just salvage at first."

But I'm still excited to find out what he becomes as I read more!

[Sarah]

That's a good book. Have fun :)

[Rachel]

Oh yeah Borne is one of my top books of the year so far

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I was reminded again of a book I'd mentioned in the Blurb/Blerg thread earlier, which has this memorable first line:

"How fast does a man run, when the Devil is after him?"

The Secret Book of Paradys

[Kristin B.]

Allison wrote: "I was reminded again of a book I'd mentioned in the Blurb/Blerg thread earlier, which has this memorable first line:

"How fast does a man run, when the Devil is after him?"

[book:The Secret Book ..."

That first line sounded interesting, so I clicked on the book to check it out. Apparently, it's already on my TBR. I'm assuming I added it when you mentioned it on the other thread. You're a bad influence on my TBR! ;)

[Trike]

After seeing the trailer for Mortal Engines, I was reminded of that book’s first line:

“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”

The trailer is basically that first line. https://youtu.be/fupYIggOq38

[Sarah]

That's really cool, Trike. I love the imagery.

Allison, you're killing me with that book. It's too long to snatch it up on impulse. Dammit. Oh hell. Library, here I come.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

mwahaha! it's so good though.

Trike, that is good.

[Am]

Jonas wrote: "'Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.' -A Certain Slant of Light"

I liked this line so much I added it to my tbr

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Thumbing through my library, came upon this one!

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

or this one, which is not on my list yet but only because I want to try Midnight's Children first:

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." The Satanic Verses

[Dylan]

This is not from a SciFi or Fantasy, but it is an unbeatable first line. I wanna see if anyone can guess where it's from:

"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one."

:)

[CBRetriever]

Lonesome Dove?

[Dj]

CBRetriever wrote: "Lonesome Dove?"

Damn after struggling through the first two chapters I gave up and watched the movie. I know the author was only trying to show how boring it was where they were at, but it bored me right out of reading the book. LOL

[CBRetriever]

I actually enjoyed it, but as I'm a speed reader (self-taught - I read phrases, not individual words), I can read and process a book quicker so I don't get bored. The only series of McMurty's that I couldn't read was The Berrybender Narratives.

[Beth]

Allison wrote: "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." The Satanic Verses

I love this one! The Satanic Verses has been on my TBR for a while...

[Sarah]

Ijust started Noir by Robert Coover.

You are at the morgue. Where the light is weird.

[Kristin B.]

Just started The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic and the first line seems promising:

"Bridger gripped the slick metal of the drainpipe and imagined the headline for the following day: Teenager Falls to His Death Attempting to Apply for a Job."

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Haha!! That's good!

[Mareike]

Definitely the opening of Beloved:
"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom."

And this one from The Blind Assassin:
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove her car off a bridge."

I'll see if I can think of any others.