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:
Lying is like farming, or draining marshland, or terracing a hillside or planting a grove of peach trees. It’s an attempt to control your environment and make it better. A convincing lie improves on bleak, bare fact, in the same way human beings improve a wilderness so they can bear to live there. In comparison, truth is a desert.
Do you know which book this is from? Scroll down to find out!
Title: Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead
Author: K. J. Parker
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
Goodreads Synopsis
There’s no formal training for battlefield salvage. You just have to pick things up as you go along. Swords, armor, arrows – and the bodies, of course.
Over the years, Saevus Corax has picked up a lot of things. Some of them have made him decent money, others have brought nothing but trouble. But it’s a living, and somebody has to deal with the dead.
Something else that Saevus has buried is his past. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite succeed.
I haven’t heard of this one but the lines are really good and make me quite curious.
Right?! I’m even more intrigued now than I was by the synopsis. I’d never heard of it either until I saw it in one of the Orbit newsletters. They released all three books at the end of last year (October – December).
Okay, wow, these are some great first lines! I want to keep reading 👀 I’d never heard of this one but would be keen to hear your final thoughts on it if/when you read it!
I’d never heard of it either until I saw it in one of the Orbit newsletters. It sounded intriguing, and these first lines definitely made me want to keep reading, too. I’ll have a review eventually… 🙂
Well…those are some nice first lines. Philosophical, yet approachable. Enjoy!
I thought so, too. I’m definitely curious to see where the story goes.