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!
Today’s First Lines:
The skeletons stare at me from across the moat, waiting. If you’d asked me, even two days ago, if I believed that reanimated skeletons, their joints tied together with ribbon, were possible, I would have said no. Even with everything I’ve seen – the pit traps and rolling boulders, the ancient mechanisms that somehow still functioned, the scepter that controlled fire – I would have drawn the line there. But now I have to say, I’m a believer. You sort of have to believe in a thing after it spends hours trying to kill you.
Do you know which book this is from? Scroll down to find out!
Title: Lion’s Legacy
Author: L.C. Rosen
Publication Date: May 2, 2023
Goodreads Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Tennessee Russo’s life is imploding. His boyfriend has been cheating on him, and all his friends know about it. Worse, they expect him to just accept his ex’s new relationship and make nice. So when his father, a famous archaeologist and reality show celebrity whom he hasn’t seen in two years, shows up unexpectedly and offers to take him on an adventure, Tennessee only has a few choices:
1. Stay, mope, regret it forever.
2. Go, try to reconcile with Dad, become his sidekick again.
3. Go, but make it his adventure, and Dad will be the sidekick.
The object of his father’s latest quest, the Rings of the Sacred Band of Thebes, is too enticing to say no to. Finding artifacts related to the troop of ancient Greek soldiers, composed of one-hundred-and-fifty gay couples, means navigating ruins, deciphering ancient mysteries, and maybe meeting a cute boy.
But will his dad let Tennessee do the right thing with the rings if they find them? And what is the right thing? Who does queer history belong to?
Against the backdrop of a sunlit Greek landscape, author L. C. Rosen masterfully weaves together adventure, romance, and magic in a celebration of the power of claiming your queer legacy.
This sounds like a very fun read! Have you read it yet?
I just started it today. The prologue was a bit rough, but I enjoyed the first couple of chapters. It reads really young YA. I was expecting YA, but it definitely feels targeted to kids who just leveled up from middle grade. I don’t mind it, though. I just didn’t expect it. Now that my expectations are adjusted a little, I’m liking it well enough.