First Line Friday: 11/22

Happy Friday everybody! Three weeks in a row!

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 are the first lines:

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.

Any ideas on the book yet? If not, here comes another hint or two.

Still don’t know? Hmm. Look at these awesome pictures of books while you think on it a bit more…

Annnd the book is… 🥁🥁 The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie!!

(Did you guess it?)

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

SERIES: The First Law Trilogy #1

LENGTH: 542 pages

GENRES: Fantasy, Fiction

PUBLISHER: Orbit

RELEASE DATE: 4 May 2006

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

The first novel in the First Law Trilogy and debut fantasy novel from New York Times bestseller, Joe Abercrombie.

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian — leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies.

Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he’s about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

Unpredictable, compelling, wickedly funny, and packed with unforgettable characters, The Blade Itself is noir fantasy with a real cutting edge.

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 amazing day/night!

See ya ~Mar

WWW Wednesday: 11/13

It’s been a few weeks since I last participated, but I’m reading something on a Wednesday again, so… yeah.

WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme that used to be hosted at A Daily Rhythm, but has been taken over by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Now, without further ado, let’s get into the 3 Ws!

The 3 Ws of WWW Wednesday:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

The Thing I’m Currently Reading

Skyshade by Alex Aster

CURRENT STATUS: 2%

CURRENT FEELS: 😈 (I’m so looking forward to this trainwreck – will it retroactively make the first two books even worse, I wonder?)

The Thing I Most Recently Finished Reading

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

☆★ Star rating is for all the entire story as a whole, not each individual volume. Also, haven’t posted a review yet, lol (though to be fair I just finished it). It’s coming eventually though! ★☆

The Thing(s) I Might Read Next

  • The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie: I’ve wanted to read more Leckie ever since I read Lake of Souls a few months ago. I’ve already acquired this book, and am definitely planning on reading it before the end of the year at least.
  • House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas: I’ve had this book for several months now, and it’s been on my TBR for about the same amount of time. My cousins were also planning on reading Crescent City as of Christmas of last year and I kind of want to discuss it with them, so I’d like to read at least the first book before Christmas.
  • The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie: This series has been on my radar for years, but as with most popular high fantasy series, I’ve been wary about reading it (mostly because I’ve DNF-ed quite a few of them – I’m looking at you A Song of Ice and Fire (got to book two), The Name of the Wind and The Way of Kings). But I’m thinking of giving it a real shot, and am hoping to read it before the year ends.

What books has everyone been reading lately? What have you thought of them? What are you thinking of reading next?

Anyway, thank you to everyone for reading, and I hope that you have a great day/night!

See ya ~Mar

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish Had Less Pages

Hey everybody! Happy Tuesday!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Books I Wish Had More/Less [Insert Your Concept Here] In Them (for example: more/less romance, more/less world building, less info dumping, more/fewer pages, more character development, fewer characters, fewer descriptions, more suspense, etc.).

The variation that I ended up going with Books I Wish Had Less Pages. Also, to a lesser degree, but books with less descriptions and stuff too, because super long SFF books in particular have this problem (for me). I could only think of eight books this time, though, so that’s how long my list is.

A Game of Thrones: Real talk, I actually finished this one. But I didn’t finish its sequel, A Clash of Kings, because I was still burned out with how bloated this book was for me, particularly regarding descriptions. And then the series just continues to be too big and long for me, so I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.

The Way of Kings: This is another book I was recommended because it (like GOT) was apparently one of the greatest fantasy books, and fantasy series, ever. And… it was too slow for me. It also has way too many pages – over 1000 and it’s only book one!

House of Earth and Blood: This is actually one I’m almost positive I’ll read. Eventually. It’s just so long. I’m finding it a bit intimidating. But there’s something about Maas’ writing style, I’m always able to power through it for some reason.

The Eye of the World: They say never say never, but I’m pretty sure I’m never gonna read any of the Wheel of Time. It’s just waayyy too long.

The Shadow of What Was Lost: This was yet another book that I DNF-ed because I 1) Got bored, and 2) The length intimidated me.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: I’m actually kind of interested in this one still. But it’s 860 pages, and I’ve heard it’s a bit bloated and boring.

The Blade Itself: I’ve actually almost picked this one up a couple times – I do have a degree of interest in reading it. But I’ve been burned by fantasy books roughly the same length – 550 pages or so – so I’m, once again, nervous about committing to it.

A Court of Wings and Ruin: I didn’t completely hate this book, but I didn’t love it either. I did finish it though. I think this is where the ACOTAR series started to get overwritten and excessive, however, which is why I added it to this list.