Happy Friday, everybody! Wow, it’s been a couple of months – I didn’t mean for that to happen!
(Edit: Who accidentally scheduled this for today and had to fix it in post? And also didn’t notice until now because they were busy yesterday and then crashed last night? Couldn’t be me. Definitely not. Ugh. I have got to stop doing this.)
First Line Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers (formerly) hosted by Wandering Words, but I saw it over at One Book More.
What if instead of judging a book by the cover, author or most everything else, we judged it by its content? Its first lines?
If you want to join in, all you gotta do is:
📚 Take a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open it 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!
Here’s the first line:
My big brother reaches home in the dark hours before dawn, when Leven ghosts take their rest. He smells of steel and coal and forge. He smells of the enemy.
Any ideas on what book it is? If you don’t, here’s another couple of hints…
Still have no idea? Here are some lovely pictures of books to admire while you think about it…
Annnd the book is… 🥁🥁 An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir!
(Didja guess it?)
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
SERIES: An Ember in the Ashes #1
LENGTH: 464 pages
GENRES: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction
PUBLISHER: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
RELEASE DATE: 28 April 2015
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier – and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined – and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
What books have you been reading lately? What’s on your TBR that you’re currently the most excited about?
As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you have an awesome day/night!
See ya ~Mar