To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

[Brian]

Snow, tenderly caught by eddying breezes, swirled and spun in and out of bright, lustrous shapes that gleamed against the emerald-blazoned black drape of sky and sparkled there for a moment, hanging, before settling gently to the soft, green-tufted plain with all the sickly sweetness of an over-written sentence.

[DavidO]

lol

Thanks for the warning about this book! Nothing I hate worse than sentences about weather to start a book. And to top it off, some purple prose!

[Stefan]

That is one of my favorite opening lines in fantasy ever. Brust is at his best when he does meta-fictiony things like that (like the whole business with Paarfi in the afterwords of the Khaavren books).

[Brian]

David wrote: "And to top it off, some purple prose!"

The opening paragraph isn't really that reflective of the book - the overwrought prose is purely there for the purposes of the punchline. The rest is very much Brust attempting to channel Zelazny - very dialog driven, with a similar slightly stilted self-aware style.

It's not one of Brust's best, but its well worth reading, and that opening paragraph always makes me smile a little.

[DavidO]

I thought you added the last couple of words to the sentence and it was your joke. Oops!