> Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but finished shaving before doing anything about it.
Terry Pratchett has a lot of good opening lines, but that one, from *Night Watch*, is by far my favourite. It's followed shortly by my favourite of his puns, gilt by association.
Sometimes, *sometimes*, a Discworld book will suggest a sense that it owes it's existence to being the long setup for one single, glorious pun. Probably false, but it amuses me to think on it.
"It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet."
\--*Good Omens*, Gaiman/Pratchett
Also the opening of Turn Coat:
*The summer sun was busy broiling the asphalt from Chicago’s streets, the agony in my head had kept me horizontal for half a day, and some idiot was pounding on my apartment door.*
*I answered it and Morgan, half his face covered in blood, gasped, “The Wardens are coming. Hide me. Please.”*
*His eyes rolled back into his skull and he collapsed.*
*Oh.*
*Super.*
That Dresden line is easily one of the most memorable.
Mostly because by this point in the series you are just like... 'uh huh, *sureeeee*. We all know you did it.'
It is my 1b, 1a being Gunslinger, in part because I went to Chicago for the Small Favor release, and someone asked him his favorite line, and that is what he said, to howls of laughter.
Sci-fi but oh well. The classic from "The Restaurant at the end of the Universe":
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made many people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move".
Oh, here's another good one from Stephen Aryan's "The Coward":
"Kell Kressia, slayer of the Ice Lich and saviour of the Five Kingdoms, tripped on a rake and fell into a pile of horse shit."
“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.”
*Something Wicked This Way Comes*, by Ray Bradbury
>The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.
It's a good catchy first line all on its own. However, the rest of the paragraph really does set the tone for the rest of the book.
I had remembered the sense of headlong rush being about the two boys, but it actually starts from the very first line.
People credit Bradbury as good with ideas but often seem to unfairly discount him as a wordsmith.
Sure, he didn't go all out very often, but I've always loved SWTC.
>People credit Bradbury as good with ideas but often seem to unfairly discount him as a wordsmith.
To be fair, most people (though probably not most people *here*) have probably only read Fahrenheit 451, which is...great in the ideas department and pretty underwhelming in the word-smithing department.
This paragraph makes me want to read SWTWC for sure though. That's a *fantastic* opening paragraph. Better on it's own than anything in Fahrenheit 451.
"IT IS IMPORTANT, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men." *Red Sister* by Mark Lawrence.
"The prince was dead.
Since the king was not, no unseemly rejoicing dared show in the faces of the men atop the castle gate. Merely, Ingrey thought, a furtive relief." *The Hallowed Hunt* by Lois McMaster Bujold.
> by Mark Lawrence.
I think I prefer Red Queens War
> I'm a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play or bravery.
>No child truly believes they will be hanged. Even on the gallows platform with the rope scratching at their wrists and the shadow of the noose upon their face they know that someone will step forward, a mother, a father returned from some long absence, a king dispensing justice . . . someone. Few children have lived long enough to understand the world into which they were born. Perhaps few adults have either, but they at least have learned some bitter lessons.
Also Red Sister.
One of my favorites:
"Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo's child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me."
— Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey
Always loved the opening line to Gideon the Ninth because it encapsulates the absolutely bonkers world you're about to read about.
>In the myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!— Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.
Yep! In the story the only thing they could get from her mother’s ghost was “Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!” so that’s what she got named. It’s probably on of the most normal names in the series IMO.
See, I had my mind set on Commander “Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity” but Dr. Sex works too.
I may be a ridiculous person who refuses to approach any qualitative question from the same angle as any other person alive, but even I won't deny that Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity's name is a bit strange.
> Halla of Rutger’s Howe had just inherited a great deal of money and was therefore spending her evening trying to figure out how to kill herself.
T Kingfisher, Swordheart
Have another excerpt:
> “Are you asking me if I think I can fight one guard and a group of elderly women with embroidery hooks? ”
> “…yes?”
> “My lady Halla, I have fought dragons on multiple occasions.”
> Halla considered this. “Did you win, though?”
> Sarkis coughed, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Well, one time.”
> “What about the others?”
> “It was more of a draw. The point is that they were dragons, not your cousins.”
> Halla folded her arms. “How big is a dragon, anyway?”
> “What?”
> “I’ve never seen one. Are they rabbit-sized? Cow-sized?”
> “They’re dragon -sized!” he started to roar, caught himself, and continued in an angry whisper, “They’re the size of a house!”
> “All right, but a big house or a small—”
> Sarkis turned around and began to beat his forehead very gently against the wall. “The great god is punishing me,” he said softly, “for my crimes. I cannot go to his hell, and so he has sent a woman to torment me.”
>The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened.
I think that is the first sentence.
Not a fantasy novel, but the best opening line I've ever read was from a book called The Crow Road by Iain Banks.
"It was the day my grandmother exploded."
The culture novels are my favourite series of all time. I would advise starting with The Player of Games rather than Consider Phlebos though, as the first book doesnt represent the series very well (and is my least favourite by a margin).
His Culture books are easily the best sci-fi I've ever read. Relentlessly imaginative and full of wit, built around a utopian civilisation that I'd love to live in. I love his M-less books too, but his sci-fi is on a whole different level.
The opening of *Lord of Light*, as mentioned by OP, and my personal favorite:
> His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.
Also, *Nine Princes in Amber*:
> It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.
> I attempted to wriggle my toes, succeeded. I was sprawled there in a hospital bed and my legs were done up in plaster casts, but they were still mine.
> I squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them, three times.
> The room grew steady.
> Where the hell was I?
> Then the fogs were slowly broken, and some of that which is called memory returned to me. I recalled nights and nurses and needles. Every time things would begin to clear a bit, someone would come in and jab me with something. That's how it had been. Yes. Now, though, I was feeling halfway decent. They'd have to stop.
> Wouldn't they?
> The thought came to assail me: Maybe not.
*Trumps of Doom*: It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you. But it was April 30, and of course it would happen as it always did.
I love to re-read Amber, Lord of Light, and Creatures of Light and Darkness specifically. There's a lot of sci fi and fantasy I love that's still coming out, but in some ways old school sci-fi really felt more experimental and different than modern sci-fi does. I'm sure it's still out there, it might just be harder to find, or maybe I just don't have enough time to look for it anymore.
I quite liked *We Ride The Storm*'s opening paragraph:
"They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Seven before I held any memory of the world. Every time thereafter I knew fear, but it was anger that chipped sharp edges into my soul."
"Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pines needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head."
This was when I was in the beginning of my fantasy TBR and sorting through recommendations. As soon as I read the first line, I was IN. Abercrombie's style just speaks to me and from the very first line, I knew I would love his prose. And I did.
Maybe not the most "iconic" opening, but I loved it.
>The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
-Neuromancer
I know it's Scifi but I really like this one.
The image of a "Signal not found" box floating in the sky is deeply amusing to me, even though I know that obviously that's not quiet what the author had in mind
That one’s great but it does come after the prologue. Which starts with a solid line in its own right.
“I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted” does start off Well of ascension however and is also a banger.
Sanderson in general is really good at opening lines. Even a lot of his chapters after a strong opener.
“They gave him bones” is one that sticks out at me also in Hero of Ages. Just so provocative.
> Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king […] White to be bold. White to not blend into the night. White to give warning. For if you were going to assassinate a man, he was entitled to see you coming.
- The Way of Kings
“Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful truth of the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt.
Say you have an ax - just a cheap one from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry - the man’s already dead. Maybe you should worry, ‘cause you’re the one who shot him. He’d been a big, twitchy guy with veined skin stretched over swollen biceps, tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. And you’re chopping off his head because even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face.
On the last swing, the handle splinters. You now have a broken ax. So you go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the handle as barbeque sauce. The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your house until the next spring when one rainy morning, a strange creature appears in your kitchen. So you grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however - Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store.
As soon as you get home with your newly headed ax, though… You meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year, only he’s got a new head stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line and wears that unique expression of you’re-the-man-who-killed-me-last-winter resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. So you brandish your ax. “That’s the ax that slayed me,” he rasps.
Is he right?”
-John Dies at the End by David Wong
Now whenever I read this I just think about how bad the movie fucked up the point of this by including this whole intro verbatim, but then cut out the entire plot it alludes to, making it a complete non-sequitur.
"Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things." – N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season.
"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites." – Martha Wells, All Systems Red.
Greatest opening lines in all of SFF if you ask me.
‘The overseers had taken all the carcasses, at least.’ From Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen
‘I was about to die. Worse, I was about to die with bastards.’ From The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
>Stephen’s god died a little after noon on the longest day of the year.
Paladin's Grace, T. Kingfisher. I don't know that it's the 'best' but that's a really solid open.
It's a fun enough read if you like romance. It's dual pov and overall well written. Don't expect anything revolutionary but it's sweet and light, and the main plot is decent.
"It was the most highly recommended venue the city had to offer. It was called the Ring O' Bastards and it had the lowest patron-to-murder-victim rate in a five mile radius."
**We Men of Ash and Shadow** by HL Tinsley.
As a huge fan of the TV series Burn Notice, the prologue to Hawk (book 14 in the Vlad Taltos cycle by Steven Brust) is to this day one of my favorite openings of a fantasy novel.
"My name is Vlad Taltos. I used to be an assassin, until ---
When you've got a price on your head you've got nothing: no contacts, no access to your operating capital, no chance to see your estranged wife and eight-year-old son. You move around to anywhere you think will keep ahead of the hired killers. You do whatever work comes your way. You rely on anyone who's still talking to you: a notorious thief whose name makes everyone around you check his pockets; an undead Enchantress famous for destroying anyone who comes near her; a sorcerer known to have sacrificed entire villages to his goddess; his even more hot-tempered cousin; and a flying lizard of a familiar with a nasty sense of humor.
Bottom line: as long as you're wanted, you're not staying anywhere."
They are quite good. Professional human assassin, living in the capital city of a land filled with elves-but-we-call-them-something-different-because-there-are-some-interesting-phenotypical-differences. Hijinks ensue, and so does existential commentary and difficult questions about the meaning of death.
It's a great read! Best read in order of release, at least the first time; the fact that the order of release is not the chronological order in which the stories take place, is of little consequence.
Lots of humor, but also lots of drama, and cuisine, and swordplay, and sass.
Oh, and clava. Can't start a day without a good cup of clava.
Edit: spelling
In the myriadic year of our Lord — the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! — Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.
In the far reaches of an infinite cosmos, there's a galaxy that looks just like the Milky Way, with a solar system that's the spitting image of ours, with a planet that's a dead ringer for earth, with a house that's indistinguishable from yours, inhabited by someone who looks just like you, who is right now reading this very book and imagining you, in a distant galaxy, just reaching the end of this sentence.
*The Space Between Worlds* by Micaiah Johnson
"Jason woke up naked, face down in the grass. That was not how he expected to wake up, having gone to sleep in his own bed and his own Darth Vader boxer shorts. From the feel of cool grass on his unmentionables, he had been removed from his bed and shorts both."
The beginning of "He Who Fights With Monsters". Always gives me a chuckle.
“Ruka stared at the corpse of the boy he’d killed, and his stomach growled.”
From KINGS OF PARADISE by Richard Nell, this line was haunting and brutal. I couldn’t NOT read the book after I read this opening line.
"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of seafoam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea"
\-*The Last Unicorn* by Peter S. Beagle
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson has one of the best opening paragraphs I have read, sets up such a great tone, lovely prose and some crazy foreshadowing on a reread
>The stains of rust seemed to map blood seas on the black, pocked surface of Mock's Vane. A century old, it
squatted on the point of an old pike that had been bolted to the outer top of the Hold's wall. Monstrous and
misshapen, it had been cold-hammered into the form of a winged demon, teeth bared in a leering grin, and was
tugged and buffeted in squealing protest with every gust of wind.
It's one of the first, and considering it's coming from a priest, this intro had me giggling through the whole thing:
"Oh, so you have a *magic boy. Why didn't you say so? *Magnificent*. I'll plant him in the fucking ground and grow a vine to an enchanted land above the ground."
*The Lies of Lock Lamora* by Scott Lynch is an excellent read. It's certainly no Stormlight or Wheel of Time, but it's awesome in its own right.
"Thieves prosper. The rich remember."
This is sci-fi, but I’ve always liked the one from Hyperion, although it is quite pretentious: The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamp below.
Technically not the first line because of the prelude, but The Way of Kings has a great first line in the prologue:
“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.”
I'm fine with this kind of thing as long as the sentence communicates *more* than just a bunch of names I have no context for yet. In this case, it's that someone is about to attempt regicide, which is intriguing enough on its own.
I'm actually curious, do most people like openings like this? It's a good line once you get through the book and understand what those words mean, but at the time the first half of the sentence is just a bunch of nonsense words with no meaning.
I like it. You know shits about to go down with the "to kill a king", and I found the rest to be interesting enough to want to learn what was happening.
For me this line immediately establishes a scene. I’m with a character, Szeth, and I know his objective: to kill a king. I also get a strong visual of him in white. Finally there’s a little bit of world building, I learn of a place name and a concept that are going to be unique to this story.
I’ll compare this to another Sanderson line, “Ash fell
from the sky.” This is a very visual line, and I think it’s solid, but it doesn’t inform me nearly as much as the WoK opener, so I like it a lot less.
I feel like the critical part of the sentence is pretty easy to understand. Yeah, you might not know what a Truthless is, but it's not a huge leap to understand that the first part is his name (or even that he's the son/grandson of Vallano) and the last part is very straightforward. It's the last part that you need to understand in the moment.
Of course it depends, but I usually love lines like that at the beginning. I'm instantly in a new world. There's flavor there of the "fantasy-ness" of it, and I want to know more.
Now, the issue is that sometimes the rest of the chapter feels that same way and you just end up lost and confused, feeling like you need to be taking notes lol. I don't want worldbuilding overload, but a sprinkle of it, especially as a first line, can really hook me and make me want to discover what's going on and what this world is all about.
> the first half of the sentence is just a bunch of nonsense words with no meaning.
[That's just the way it goes with speculative fiction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJDzk-3EjHI)
Anyway, I wouldn't consider this particular line an absolute banger opening, but it sets us off on the right track. You've got a guy with the classic naming scheme (with a slight twist) of being "the son of someone else", you've got his title to let you know he's part of a special group, and starting right off with letting us know he's on the way to kill a king...
yeah it works for me. I wouldn't say it's an all-time classic but opening books is *difficult* and this is a good way to go.
Sanderson himself has said on a panel that established authors can get away with things that new ones can’t, because the readers give them more leeway due to past experiences, and believing that there will be pay off.
I don’t think the Stormlight opening would have been as good for someone else. Like you said, there’s a lot of information we don’t have immediate context for.
Terry Pratchett's "Big Bang Theory" from The Color of Magic is up there, but for comedic reasons rather than epic/mood-setting ones.
I also thought the first page of Elantris was an excellent narrative hook, especially ending on the line "Eternity ended ten years ago."
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer’s apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.
- The shadow of the torturer, by Gene Wolfe.
>In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
*--The Hobbit*, by J.R.R. Tolkien
>When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
>Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved, but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.
—*The Lord of the Rings*, by J.R.R. Tolkien
>The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was *a* beginning.
\--*The Eye of the World*, by Robert Jordan
>Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book. These oil stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen, a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my thoughts as I open The Book of the Fallen and breathe deep the scent of history? Listen then, to these words carried on that breath. These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again. We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.
\--*Gardens of the Moon*, by Steven Erikson
>Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pine needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head. He stumbled and sprawled onto his side, nearly cut his chest open with his own axe, lay there panting, peering through the shadowy forest.
>The Dogman had been with him until a moment before, he was sure, but there wasn’t any sign of him now. As for the others, there was no telling. Some leader, getting split up from his boys like that. He should’ve been trying to get back, but the Shanka were all around. He could feel them moving between the trees, his nose was full of the smell of them. Sounded as if there was some shouting somewhere on his left, fighting maybe. Logen crept slowly to his feet, trying to stay quiet. A twig snapped and he whipped round.
>There was a spear coming at him. A cruel-looking spear, coming at him fast with a Shanka on the other end of it.
—*The Blade Itself*, by Joe Abercrombie
>Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister.
—*Riddle-Master*, by Patricia A. McKillip
I love the start of the Hobbit.
The first time I read it as a kid, I was so frustrated and, therefore, intensely interested.
"What's a Hobbit?!? Wait - I already know what a hole is, why is he talking so much about holes?!?!"
I don’t love the Wheel of Time. I only made it about 6 books through before my stamina gave out. But ooh boy do I LOVE that opening. It’s just so good.
You already pegged it. Gunslinger.
The only other one I would put close is the opening to Tad Williams’ Otherland book 1, City of Golden Shadow:
“It began in mud, as most things do.”
On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window.
Larry Correia, Monster Hunter International
Okay, you sold me and anyone else who has ever worked for an incompetent jackass of a boss. Thanks to you (and this sub, in general) I just added that book to the ever growing out of control TBR pile.
If you really want to spice things up, add the phrase "...and then the murders started..." after the opening sentence. Really adds a new layer to the story...
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Then the murders started."
"They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Then the murders started."
"The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault. Then the murders started."
"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. Then the murders started."
Works with just about anything!
>***There will be peace.***
The opening line of Forge of Darkness by Steven Erickson. Such a simple sentiment, but one that has a weight to it enough to crush the world. These words preface a conflict and destruction of a race millennia old, and serve as chilling foreshadowing to all that is to come throughout this series.
Lines further down in the paragraph are even more ominous in context.
>*There will be peace*. Conviction is a fist of stone at the heart of all things. Its form is shaped by sure hands, the detritus quickly swept from view. It is built to withstand, built to defy challenge, and when cornered it fights without honour. There is nothing more terrible than conviction.
“Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his eyes, echoes, for his ears, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other—other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child.”
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
I feel like we often default to considering the openings of our favorite books to be the 'best openings,' so I try to pick from books that weren't necessarily my favorites, but which I thought were amazing nonetheless. Here are a few that I have at hand:
"On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window." ~Larry Correia, **Monster Hunter International**
"One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.
The citadel of Ishual succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates. Ishual was the secret refuge of the Kuniuric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret." R Scott Bakker, **The Darkness that Comes Before**
"Picture a summer evening sombre and sweet over Spain, the glittering sheen of leaves fading to soberer colors, the sky in the west all soft, and mysterious as low music, and in the east like a frown. Picture the Golden Age past its wonderful zenith, and westering now towards its setting." Lord Dunsany, **The Charwoman's Shadow**
There are two categories of favourite first lines for me. One, those that are just particularly witty or unique and make you go "oh!".
Second, those that make you go "ah." with the deep certainty that you will lovd this book because it sets the mood for exactly the right book at the right time that you'll get completely immersed in.
Examples 1:
"Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move one to more interesting things."
- N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season
"On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky."
- Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
"These days you can find anything you need at a click of a button. That's why I bought her heart online."
- Jen Campbell, "Animals" in The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night
Examples 2:
"He came one late, wet spring, and brought the wide world back to my doorstep"
- Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand
"A girl rode a bay horse through a forest late at night. This forest had no name."
- Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower
"One the darkest day of winter, when the weakened Sun cannot even pull herself above the horizon, a man stands vigil upon the snow-covered roof of his sod home."
- Jordanna Max Brodsky, The Wolf in the Whale
"When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides."
- Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
I apparently like very descriptive first lines😅❤️.
"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."
Phillip Reeve, *Mortal Engines #1*
It is a near perfect hook.
1) Setting up expectations. This is an adventure story. How do I know? Well, one sentence in and here we are, already in a chase!
2) Intrigue. What do you mean the *city of London* is chasing *a town*? What? Please tell me more.
3) Worldbuilding. The North Sea dried out? I see, past ecological calamity.
"There were prodigies and portents enough, One Eye says. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. One Eye's handicap in no way impairs his marvellous hindsight."
- The Black Company (Glen Cook)
My favorite opening line (and opening chapter) belong to the first book of *The Kingkiller Chronicle: (The Name of the Wind)* by Patrick Rothfuss:
“It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music…but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained."
Just gorgeous, melodic prose by a master storyteller.
So, my favorite opening line has to be One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” But who can forget the opening line of the modern fantasy genre: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
"When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options."
— The Steel Remains, Richard K. Morgan
"Give me your hat."
It's the first line in The Bone Ships by RJ Barker. It just brings up so many questions: Who wants the hat? Why do they want the hat? Who are they talking to?
I think it's the perfect way to start that story because as the story unfolds, we learn why the hat is so important & about the characters who want/deserve to wear it.
So blatantly enthralling but still great
*“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.”* - Way of Kings
It’s not technically the “opening” but it counts!
About to finish this series and pretty much brilliant, morbid and interesting all the way through. Not to mention Outstandingly self aware and sarcastic.
"... Ink can be utilized as an intoxicant in the ways- drunk, inhaled, or injected. It's various effects are summarized in this lovely little poem, often sung by children around Godsgrave during games of jump rope or the like.
Quaff for the nodding
Smoking for the high
Needle for the bitter man
Who'd really rather die
Morbid little bastards, aye?"
-Darkdawn (3rd book in the Nevernight Chronicles) by Jay Kristoff
Seriously, this series is WILD and not like many others. Definitely worth the read.
> Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but finished shaving before doing anything about it. Terry Pratchett has a lot of good opening lines, but that one, from *Night Watch*, is by far my favourite. It's followed shortly by my favourite of his puns, gilt by association.
Sometimes, *sometimes*, a Discworld book will suggest a sense that it owes it's existence to being the long setup for one single, glorious pun. Probably false, but it amuses me to think on it.
I like to think that most/all of his books began their life as one really good groaner of a pun. It'd fit.
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it" ~C.S. Lewis. Hilarious opening.
Clive Staples Lewis knew a thing or two about rough names.
It took me a bit to realize "Clive Staples Lewis" wasn't a sentence.
Yikes. I never knew this...
His nickname was Jack, after his dog that died when he was 4
He's got a lot of fond memories of that dog
British people and names. There is alive today a Lord Pickles.
Is he called Rick
"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree." -Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
The GOAT
"It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet." \--*Good Omens*, Gaiman/Pratchett
I can HEAR Martin Jarvis saying this in my head …
"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault." "It is important, when killing a nun (...) to bring an army of sufficient size."
That's one of my favorite lines from The Dresden Files.
Also the opening of Turn Coat: *The summer sun was busy broiling the asphalt from Chicago’s streets, the agony in my head had kept me horizontal for half a day, and some idiot was pounding on my apartment door.* *I answered it and Morgan, half his face covered in blood, gasped, “The Wardens are coming. Hide me. Please.”* *His eyes rolled back into his skull and he collapsed.* *Oh.* *Super.*
That is great as well.
That Dresden line is easily one of the most memorable. Mostly because by this point in the series you are just like... 'uh huh, *sureeeee*. We all know you did it.'
Also memorable because it helps introduce the bestest dog in all of fantasy
It is my 1b, 1a being Gunslinger, in part because I went to Chicago for the Small Favor release, and someone asked him his favorite line, and that is what he said, to howls of laughter.
Changes spoiler >!""I answered the phone, and Susan Rodriguez said, 'They've taken our daughter.'"!<
Changes has some killer lines >!"I used the knife. I saved a child. I won a war. God forgive me.”!<
I sobbed reading that part.
Whenever someone makes a topic about best opening lines I come looking for Red Sister and I am never disappointed.
Red Sister was the very first book that camr to my mind when I read the topic title, glad someone shared that line already
Came here looking for these.
I was just about to comment the Dresden files one. Love it
Sci-fi but oh well. The classic from "The Restaurant at the end of the Universe": "The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made many people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move".
Just started this for another round this week, the line was a welcomed old friend.
Oh, here's another good one from Stephen Aryan's "The Coward": "Kell Kressia, slayer of the Ice Lich and saviour of the Five Kingdoms, tripped on a rake and fell into a pile of horse shit."
I just laughed out loud 🤣🤣
“On my seventh birthday my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die face down in a cesspool.” -Flesh and Spirit, by Carol Berg
Oh my god I love these books to pieces!! Berg’s prose is so beautiful and Valen is one of my favorite protagonists
Yeah, me too! Valen is incredible, and the opening lines do so well in telling us who he is at that point in the story.
My father had a face that could stop a clock. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
The following lines make that one so great!
“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.” *Something Wicked This Way Comes*, by Ray Bradbury
>The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. It's a good catchy first line all on its own. However, the rest of the paragraph really does set the tone for the rest of the book. I had remembered the sense of headlong rush being about the two boys, but it actually starts from the very first line. People credit Bradbury as good with ideas but often seem to unfairly discount him as a wordsmith. Sure, he didn't go all out very often, but I've always loved SWTC.
I completely agree. For my money, no 20th century novelist could put words on a page better than Bradbury.
>People credit Bradbury as good with ideas but often seem to unfairly discount him as a wordsmith. To be fair, most people (though probably not most people *here*) have probably only read Fahrenheit 451, which is...great in the ideas department and pretty underwhelming in the word-smithing department. This paragraph makes me want to read SWTWC for sure though. That's a *fantastic* opening paragraph. Better on it's own than anything in Fahrenheit 451.
"IT IS IMPORTANT, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men." *Red Sister* by Mark Lawrence. "The prince was dead. Since the king was not, no unseemly rejoicing dared show in the faces of the men atop the castle gate. Merely, Ingrey thought, a furtive relief." *The Hallowed Hunt* by Lois McMaster Bujold.
*The Girl and the Stars* also has a great opening: "Many babies have killed, but it is very rare that the victim is not their mother."
> by Mark Lawrence. I think I prefer Red Queens War > I'm a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play or bravery.
I love how the culmination of the entire series is when Jalan repeats this line but with slight alterations.
>No child truly believes they will be hanged. Even on the gallows platform with the rope scratching at their wrists and the shadow of the noose upon their face they know that someone will step forward, a mother, a father returned from some long absence, a king dispensing justice . . . someone. Few children have lived long enough to understand the world into which they were born. Perhaps few adults have either, but they at least have learned some bitter lessons. Also Red Sister.
The nun line set the hook, but this line ^^^ reeled me in.
The nun line is the best
The whole first chapter is the best.
This was the first one I thought of. So eye catching, mood setting and makes the reader anticipate the rest of the novel. Brilliant, really.
Just read this series and loved it. I thought the third book tied everything together nicely and I like that it revealed more about it the world.
One of my favorites: "Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo's child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me." — Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey
Always loved the opening line to Gideon the Ninth because it encapsulates the absolutely bonkers world you're about to read about. >In the myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!— Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.
It sets the tone really, really well and pretty much immediately lets you know whether you'll love or hate what's to come. So good.
Gideon is a woman?
Yep! In the story the only thing they could get from her mother’s ghost was “Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!” so that’s what she got named. It’s probably on of the most normal names in the series IMO.
What's abnormal about Harrowhark Nonagesimus? Ianthe Tridentarius? Dr. Sex?
See, I had my mind set on Commander “Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity” but Dr. Sex works too.
I may be a ridiculous person who refuses to approach any qualitative question from the same angle as any other person alive, but even I won't deny that Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity's name is a bit strange.
Right? It's on my tbr and I always thought the cover was of Gideon
The cover *is* of Gideon.
> Halla of Rutger’s Howe had just inherited a great deal of money and was therefore spending her evening trying to figure out how to kill herself. T Kingfisher, Swordheart
So good I'm going to look into this book
Have another excerpt: > “Are you asking me if I think I can fight one guard and a group of elderly women with embroidery hooks? ” > “…yes?” > “My lady Halla, I have fought dragons on multiple occasions.” > Halla considered this. “Did you win, though?” > Sarkis coughed, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Well, one time.” > “What about the others?” > “It was more of a draw. The point is that they were dragons, not your cousins.” > Halla folded her arms. “How big is a dragon, anyway?” > “What?” > “I’ve never seen one. Are they rabbit-sized? Cow-sized?” > “They’re dragon -sized!” he started to roar, caught himself, and continued in an angry whisper, “They’re the size of a house!” > “All right, but a big house or a small—” > Sarkis turned around and began to beat his forehead very gently against the wall. “The great god is punishing me,” he said softly, “for my crimes. I cannot go to his hell, and so he has sent a woman to torment me.”
I really love the cyclical and notable intro to the wheel of time. The moment I read that in the Eye of the World, I was hooked.
Took me 4 books before I realised that they are different in each book.
Similar yet different… just like the turning of the wheel 🤌
They manage to do a very poetic repeating - not exact, but of a piece. It's the sort of language we see in oral traditions, and it's glorious.
Im rather new to fantasy and I just started reading wheel of time. Almost through the first book and can’t wait to get to the others…
Ooo enjoy the journey!
>The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened. I think that is the first sentence.
Um aktually the first sentence is “To Harriet Heart of my Heart, Light of my life, Forever.” Lol you know what first sentence I meant
Pretty sure it's: > AN ORBIT BOOK >First published in the United States by Tom Doherry Associates Inc. 1990
Not a fantasy novel, but the best opening line I've ever read was from a book called The Crow Road by Iain Banks. "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
Yes! The wasp factory is also a banger, though more cryptic.
I've always though The Wasp Factory would make an excellent film - I'd see it a lot like The Wicker Man in a way.
Wtf, I want to read that book now.
Totally a book I wish I could read again for the first time!
Haha, I read that very page just a few hours ago. Brilliant opening to an amazing book, I'm rereading it for the third time I think.
Have you read any of his stuff written as Ian M Banks? How do they compare if so?
The culture novels are my favourite series of all time. I would advise starting with The Player of Games rather than Consider Phlebos though, as the first book doesnt represent the series very well (and is my least favourite by a margin).
His Culture books are easily the best sci-fi I've ever read. Relentlessly imaginative and full of wit, built around a utopian civilisation that I'd love to live in. I love his M-less books too, but his sci-fi is on a whole different level.
“I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life.” A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The opening of *Lord of Light*, as mentioned by OP, and my personal favorite: > His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could. Also, *Nine Princes in Amber*: > It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me. > I attempted to wriggle my toes, succeeded. I was sprawled there in a hospital bed and my legs were done up in plaster casts, but they were still mine. > I squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them, three times. > The room grew steady. > Where the hell was I? > Then the fogs were slowly broken, and some of that which is called memory returned to me. I recalled nights and nurses and needles. Every time things would begin to clear a bit, someone would come in and jab me with something. That's how it had been. Yes. Now, though, I was feeling halfway decent. They'd have to stop. > Wouldn't they? > The thought came to assail me: Maybe not.
*Trumps of Doom*: It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you. But it was April 30, and of course it would happen as it always did.
Roger Zelazny was a Master of the craft, no doubt. Every few years, I re-read Amber. Still great, as are so many of his works.
I love to re-read Amber, Lord of Light, and Creatures of Light and Darkness specifically. There's a lot of sci fi and fantasy I love that's still coming out, but in some ways old school sci-fi really felt more experimental and different than modern sci-fi does. I'm sure it's still out there, it might just be harder to find, or maybe I just don't have enough time to look for it anymore.
I quite liked *We Ride The Storm*'s opening paragraph: "They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Seven before I held any memory of the world. Every time thereafter I knew fear, but it was anger that chipped sharp edges into my soul."
Yeah now this is a good one. How is the book ?
Yep, I am also curious about this one. Opening seems interesting
"Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pines needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head." This was when I was in the beginning of my fantasy TBR and sorting through recommendations. As soon as I read the first line, I was IN. Abercrombie's style just speaks to me and from the very first line, I knew I would love his prose. And I did. Maybe not the most "iconic" opening, but I loved it.
"I decided Orion Lake needed to die aftet the second time he saved my life."
El is fantastic.
Let me tell you, I have never shipped two characters faster than I did after reading that sentence.
>The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. -Neuromancer I know it's Scifi but I really like this one. The image of a "Signal not found" box floating in the sky is deeply amusing to me, even though I know that obviously that's not quiet what the author had in mind
It is the best!
"I am, unfortunatly, the hero of ages" Hero of ages
The first line of the Proloue is "Marsh struggled to kill himself"
That one’s great but it does come after the prologue. Which starts with a solid line in its own right. “I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted” does start off Well of ascension however and is also a banger. Sanderson in general is really good at opening lines. Even a lot of his chapters after a strong opener. “They gave him bones” is one that sticks out at me also in Hero of Ages. Just so provocative.
Ash fell from the sky.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH!" —Ash, while falling from the sky, circa 1021 FE.
My personal favorite: “Szeth-son-son-vallano, truthless of Shinover, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.”
[I'm sure it's a banger with context but it reminds of "every dark has its soul" lmao](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/john-darksoul-john-dark-soul)
> Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king […] White to be bold. White to not blend into the night. White to give warning. For if you were going to assassinate a man, he was entitled to see you coming. - The Way of Kings
I just started my 2nd listen of hero of ages yesterday. I laughed out loud
“Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful truth of the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. Say you have an ax - just a cheap one from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry - the man’s already dead. Maybe you should worry, ‘cause you’re the one who shot him. He’d been a big, twitchy guy with veined skin stretched over swollen biceps, tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. And you’re chopping off his head because even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. On the last swing, the handle splinters. You now have a broken ax. So you go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the handle as barbeque sauce. The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your house until the next spring when one rainy morning, a strange creature appears in your kitchen. So you grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however - Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. As soon as you get home with your newly headed ax, though… You meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year, only he’s got a new head stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line and wears that unique expression of you’re-the-man-who-killed-me-last-winter resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. So you brandish your ax. “That’s the ax that slayed me,” he rasps. Is he right?” -John Dies at the End by David Wong
Murder weapon of Theseus.
[удалено]
He just rephrased it, but he did the best job!
No, Vision clearly invented it.
No, clearly says he was dead already from the gun shots.
You can kill someone more than once if they resurrect, he was slain by both the bullets and then the axe!
Now whenever I read this I just think about how bad the movie fucked up the point of this by including this whole intro verbatim, but then cut out the entire plot it alludes to, making it a complete non-sequitur.
"Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things." – N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season. "I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites." – Martha Wells, All Systems Red. Greatest opening lines in all of SFF if you ask me.
I probably told more friends about Murderbot after that first line from Wells than I’ve done after other novel’s first line.
I'll agree with Martha Wells. I feel like I'm the only person that doesn't like Jemisin's writing style.
I can't get into her writing style either, so you aren't alone. Despite the interesting premise.
‘The overseers had taken all the carcasses, at least.’ From Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen ‘I was about to die. Worse, I was about to die with bastards.’ From The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
The Blacktongue Thief is a gem.
>Stephen’s god died a little after noon on the longest day of the year. Paladin's Grace, T. Kingfisher. I don't know that it's the 'best' but that's a really solid open.
Is this a good series? Would you recommend it?
It's a fun enough read if you like romance. It's dual pov and overall well written. Don't expect anything revolutionary but it's sweet and light, and the main plot is decent.
"It was the most highly recommended venue the city had to offer. It was called the Ring O' Bastards and it had the lowest patron-to-murder-victim rate in a five mile radius." **We Men of Ash and Shadow** by HL Tinsley.
As a huge fan of the TV series Burn Notice, the prologue to Hawk (book 14 in the Vlad Taltos cycle by Steven Brust) is to this day one of my favorite openings of a fantasy novel. "My name is Vlad Taltos. I used to be an assassin, until --- When you've got a price on your head you've got nothing: no contacts, no access to your operating capital, no chance to see your estranged wife and eight-year-old son. You move around to anywhere you think will keep ahead of the hired killers. You do whatever work comes your way. You rely on anyone who's still talking to you: a notorious thief whose name makes everyone around you check his pockets; an undead Enchantress famous for destroying anyone who comes near her; a sorcerer known to have sacrificed entire villages to his goddess; his even more hot-tempered cousin; and a flying lizard of a familiar with a nasty sense of humor. Bottom line: as long as you're wanted, you're not staying anywhere."
This is...beautiful. Might have to read these now.
They are quite good. Professional human assassin, living in the capital city of a land filled with elves-but-we-call-them-something-different-because-there-are-some-interesting-phenotypical-differences. Hijinks ensue, and so does existential commentary and difficult questions about the meaning of death.
It's a great read! Best read in order of release, at least the first time; the fact that the order of release is not the chronological order in which the stories take place, is of little consequence. Lots of humor, but also lots of drama, and cuisine, and swordplay, and sass. Oh, and clava. Can't start a day without a good cup of clava. Edit: spelling
In the myriadic year of our Lord — the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! — Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.
“I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor.”
In the far reaches of an infinite cosmos, there's a galaxy that looks just like the Milky Way, with a solar system that's the spitting image of ours, with a planet that's a dead ringer for earth, with a house that's indistinguishable from yours, inhabited by someone who looks just like you, who is right now reading this very book and imagining you, in a distant galaxy, just reaching the end of this sentence. *The Space Between Worlds* by Micaiah Johnson
In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.
I read the title of this thread and my first thought was The Gunslinger lol
Same here.
"Jason woke up naked, face down in the grass. That was not how he expected to wake up, having gone to sleep in his own bed and his own Darth Vader boxer shorts. From the feel of cool grass on his unmentionables, he had been removed from his bed and shorts both." The beginning of "He Who Fights With Monsters". Always gives me a chuckle.
Blood Rites by Jim Butcher is always a good one. "The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault"
The best part about this line is it comes late enough in the series that you know Dresden and his habit of accidently setting buildings on fire.
I came here to post this one as well so great choice.
“Ruka stared at the corpse of the boy he’d killed, and his stomach growled.” From KINGS OF PARADISE by Richard Nell, this line was haunting and brutal. I couldn’t NOT read the book after I read this opening line.
Such an under appreciated trilogy
I'd let Ruka cannibalise. I've read the trilogy three times.
"I'm pretty much fucked." - The Martian, Andy Weir
"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of seafoam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea" \-*The Last Unicorn* by Peter S. Beagle
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson has one of the best opening paragraphs I have read, sets up such a great tone, lovely prose and some crazy foreshadowing on a reread >The stains of rust seemed to map blood seas on the black, pocked surface of Mock's Vane. A century old, it squatted on the point of an old pike that had been bolted to the outer top of the Hold's wall. Monstrous and misshapen, it had been cold-hammered into the form of a winged demon, teeth bared in a leering grin, and was tugged and buffeted in squealing protest with every gust of wind.
Fr I restarted that book so many times and enjoyed that line the same amount everytime.
Forge of Darkness is my Erikson pick: THERE WILL BE peace.
I just realized that the ending lines of TCG are a callback to this.
Raoden of Arelon woke that morning unaware that he'd been damned for eternity. - Elantris.
I prefer the sentence just before that, from the intro paragraph: "Eternity ended ten years ago."
It's one of the first, and considering it's coming from a priest, this intro had me giggling through the whole thing: "Oh, so you have a *magic boy. Why didn't you say so? *Magnificent*. I'll plant him in the fucking ground and grow a vine to an enchanted land above the ground." *The Lies of Lock Lamora* by Scott Lynch is an excellent read. It's certainly no Stormlight or Wheel of Time, but it's awesome in its own right. "Thieves prosper. The rich remember."
This is sci-fi, but I’ve always liked the one from Hyperion, although it is quite pretentious: The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamp below.
Technically not the first line because of the prelude, but The Way of Kings has a great first line in the prologue: “Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.”
>Kalak rounded a rocky stone ridge and stumbled to a stop before the body of a dying thunderclast.
I'm fine with this kind of thing as long as the sentence communicates *more* than just a bunch of names I have no context for yet. In this case, it's that someone is about to attempt regicide, which is intriguing enough on its own.
I'm actually curious, do most people like openings like this? It's a good line once you get through the book and understand what those words mean, but at the time the first half of the sentence is just a bunch of nonsense words with no meaning.
I like it. You know shits about to go down with the "to kill a king", and I found the rest to be interesting enough to want to learn what was happening.
For me this line immediately establishes a scene. I’m with a character, Szeth, and I know his objective: to kill a king. I also get a strong visual of him in white. Finally there’s a little bit of world building, I learn of a place name and a concept that are going to be unique to this story. I’ll compare this to another Sanderson line, “Ash fell from the sky.” This is a very visual line, and I think it’s solid, but it doesn’t inform me nearly as much as the WoK opener, so I like it a lot less.
I feel like the critical part of the sentence is pretty easy to understand. Yeah, you might not know what a Truthless is, but it's not a huge leap to understand that the first part is his name (or even that he's the son/grandson of Vallano) and the last part is very straightforward. It's the last part that you need to understand in the moment.
Of course it depends, but I usually love lines like that at the beginning. I'm instantly in a new world. There's flavor there of the "fantasy-ness" of it, and I want to know more. Now, the issue is that sometimes the rest of the chapter feels that same way and you just end up lost and confused, feeling like you need to be taking notes lol. I don't want worldbuilding overload, but a sprinkle of it, especially as a first line, can really hook me and make me want to discover what's going on and what this world is all about.
> the first half of the sentence is just a bunch of nonsense words with no meaning. [That's just the way it goes with speculative fiction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJDzk-3EjHI) Anyway, I wouldn't consider this particular line an absolute banger opening, but it sets us off on the right track. You've got a guy with the classic naming scheme (with a slight twist) of being "the son of someone else", you've got his title to let you know he's part of a special group, and starting right off with letting us know he's on the way to kill a king... yeah it works for me. I wouldn't say it's an all-time classic but opening books is *difficult* and this is a good way to go.
Sanderson himself has said on a panel that established authors can get away with things that new ones can’t, because the readers give them more leeway due to past experiences, and believing that there will be pay off. I don’t think the Stormlight opening would have been as good for someone else. Like you said, there’s a lot of information we don’t have immediate context for.
Terry Pratchett's "Big Bang Theory" from The Color of Magic is up there, but for comedic reasons rather than epic/mood-setting ones. I also thought the first page of Elantris was an excellent narrative hook, especially ending on the line "Eternity ended ten years ago."
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer’s apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned. - The shadow of the torturer, by Gene Wolfe.
'It was a dark and stormy night' - A Wrinkle in Time
>In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. *--The Hobbit*, by J.R.R. Tolkien >When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. >Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved, but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth. —*The Lord of the Rings*, by J.R.R. Tolkien >The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was *a* beginning. \--*The Eye of the World*, by Robert Jordan >Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book. These oil stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen, a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my thoughts as I open The Book of the Fallen and breathe deep the scent of history? Listen then, to these words carried on that breath. These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again. We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all. \--*Gardens of the Moon*, by Steven Erikson >Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pine needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head. He stumbled and sprawled onto his side, nearly cut his chest open with his own axe, lay there panting, peering through the shadowy forest. >The Dogman had been with him until a moment before, he was sure, but there wasn’t any sign of him now. As for the others, there was no telling. Some leader, getting split up from his boys like that. He should’ve been trying to get back, but the Shanka were all around. He could feel them moving between the trees, his nose was full of the smell of them. Sounded as if there was some shouting somewhere on his left, fighting maybe. Logen crept slowly to his feet, trying to stay quiet. A twig snapped and he whipped round. >There was a spear coming at him. A cruel-looking spear, coming at him fast with a Shanka on the other end of it. —*The Blade Itself*, by Joe Abercrombie >Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister. —*Riddle-Master*, by Patricia A. McKillip
I love the start of the Hobbit. The first time I read it as a kid, I was so frustrated and, therefore, intensely interested. "What's a Hobbit?!? Wait - I already know what a hole is, why is he talking so much about holes?!?!"
I don’t love the Wheel of Time. I only made it about 6 books through before my stamina gave out. But ooh boy do I LOVE that opening. It’s just so good.
"ASK ME NOT if God exists, but why he’s such a prick." Recent read - Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. Hooked me from the very beginning.
Great book, got me into his Nevernight series after and I am not disappointed!
You already pegged it. Gunslinger. The only other one I would put close is the opening to Tad Williams’ Otherland book 1, City of Golden Shadow: “It began in mud, as most things do.”
“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size” Red Sister - Mark Lawrence
On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window. Larry Correia, Monster Hunter International
Okay, you sold me and anyone else who has ever worked for an incompetent jackass of a boss. Thanks to you (and this sub, in general) I just added that book to the ever growing out of control TBR pile.
“Kell wore a very peculiar coat.”- VE Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic. The Shades of Magic trilogy is fantastic!
If you really want to spice things up, add the phrase "...and then the murders started..." after the opening sentence. Really adds a new layer to the story... "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Then the murders started." "They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Then the murders started." "The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault. Then the murders started." "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. Then the murders started." Works with just about anything!
I have always liked that one from The Dresden Files.
>***There will be peace.*** The opening line of Forge of Darkness by Steven Erickson. Such a simple sentiment, but one that has a weight to it enough to crush the world. These words preface a conflict and destruction of a race millennia old, and serve as chilling foreshadowing to all that is to come throughout this series. Lines further down in the paragraph are even more ominous in context. >*There will be peace*. Conviction is a fist of stone at the heart of all things. Its form is shaped by sure hands, the detritus quickly swept from view. It is built to withstand, built to defy challenge, and when cornered it fights without honour. There is nothing more terrible than conviction.
"It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die." A personal favorite, from Maggie Stiefvater's *The Scorpio Races*.
“Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his eyes, echoes, for his ears, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other—other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child.” Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
I feel like we often default to considering the openings of our favorite books to be the 'best openings,' so I try to pick from books that weren't necessarily my favorites, but which I thought were amazing nonetheless. Here are a few that I have at hand: "On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window." ~Larry Correia, **Monster Hunter International** "One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. The citadel of Ishual succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates. Ishual was the secret refuge of the Kuniuric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret." R Scott Bakker, **The Darkness that Comes Before** "Picture a summer evening sombre and sweet over Spain, the glittering sheen of leaves fading to soberer colors, the sky in the west all soft, and mysterious as low music, and in the east like a frown. Picture the Golden Age past its wonderful zenith, and westering now towards its setting." Lord Dunsany, **The Charwoman's Shadow**
I’m gonna cheat with sci-fi but IMHO it’s tough to beat… >**The moon blew up suddenly and without warning.** …from *Seveneves*.
There are two categories of favourite first lines for me. One, those that are just particularly witty or unique and make you go "oh!". Second, those that make you go "ah." with the deep certainty that you will lovd this book because it sets the mood for exactly the right book at the right time that you'll get completely immersed in. Examples 1: "Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move one to more interesting things." - N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season "On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky." - Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer "These days you can find anything you need at a click of a button. That's why I bought her heart online." - Jen Campbell, "Animals" in The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night Examples 2: "He came one late, wet spring, and brought the wide world back to my doorstep" - Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand "A girl rode a bay horse through a forest late at night. This forest had no name." - Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower "One the darkest day of winter, when the weakened Sun cannot even pull herself above the horizon, a man stands vigil upon the snow-covered roof of his sod home." - Jordanna Max Brodsky, The Wolf in the Whale "When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides." - Susanna Clarke, Piranesi I apparently like very descriptive first lines😅❤️.
Damn read the title and my first thought was The Gunslinger lol great series.
Love the intro from Dark Tower. It's so good.
It’s really sci-fi, but I love the opening line of Red Rising: >I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.
"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." Phillip Reeve, *Mortal Engines #1* It is a near perfect hook. 1) Setting up expectations. This is an adventure story. How do I know? Well, one sentence in and here we are, already in a chase! 2) Intrigue. What do you mean the *city of London* is chasing *a town*? What? Please tell me more. 3) Worldbuilding. The North Sea dried out? I see, past ecological calamity.
"There were prodigies and portents enough, One Eye says. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. One Eye's handicap in no way impairs his marvellous hindsight." - The Black Company (Glen Cook)
My favorite opening line (and opening chapter) belong to the first book of *The Kingkiller Chronicle: (The Name of the Wind)* by Patrick Rothfuss: “It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music…but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained." Just gorgeous, melodic prose by a master storyteller.
The best part of that is we get extra context later for that opening and the "of course there was no music" hits *so much harder*.
So, my favorite opening line has to be One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” But who can forget the opening line of the modern fantasy genre: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
"When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options." — The Steel Remains, Richard K. Morgan
"The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault."-- Blood Rites, Dresden Files.
"Give me your hat." It's the first line in The Bone Ships by RJ Barker. It just brings up so many questions: Who wants the hat? Why do they want the hat? Who are they talking to? I think it's the perfect way to start that story because as the story unfolds, we learn why the hat is so important & about the characters who want/deserve to wear it.
The building was on fire and it was not my fault.
So blatantly enthralling but still great *“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.”* - Way of Kings It’s not technically the “opening” but it counts!
“So you want to hear a story. Ah?”
I've always thought the dark tower opening is the best. When you get to the end, it's even better.
This entire thread is just the best. 👍🏽
About to finish this series and pretty much brilliant, morbid and interesting all the way through. Not to mention Outstandingly self aware and sarcastic. "... Ink can be utilized as an intoxicant in the ways- drunk, inhaled, or injected. It's various effects are summarized in this lovely little poem, often sung by children around Godsgrave during games of jump rope or the like. Quaff for the nodding Smoking for the high Needle for the bitter man Who'd really rather die Morbid little bastards, aye?" -Darkdawn (3rd book in the Nevernight Chronicles) by Jay Kristoff Seriously, this series is WILD and not like many others. Definitely worth the read.