Just as first impressions can make or break a potential relationship, the first lines in a book or story can generate either a sense of excited anticipation or anxious dread to the tale. I would like to go over some of the best opening lines in books and what made them so memorable to me.
Let’s start off with something old. How about a stop in 14th-century Italy? Dante Alighieri began writing the Divine Comedy around the year 1308 and probably finished it in 1321. It consists of three cantiche (or songs): Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. I read (and write to some extent) a lot of horror. Dante’s journey through the various levels of hell, led by Virgil, can easily be compared to a nightmarish landscape.
And the very first words make the setting: “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.” How many horror movies have you seen where a group of people wander off the beaten path only to find themselves in a whole mountain range of trouble?
For the next opening line, I want to keep it in horror and look at Rober McCammon’s Swan Song. The mass paperback version is 956 small-print pages. A friend of mine during my senior year in high school told me about this book, and I couldn’t wait to read it. He loaned his copy to me one afternoon. The only thing I could do at that point was open the cover and start reading. After the first line, “Once upon a time we had a love affair with fire, the president of the United States thought as the match that he’d just struck to light his pipe flared beneath his fingers,” I had no intention of putting it down.
I read it during health class and English literature and even study hall. The only reason I put it in my bag was because I had to drive home. When I arrived, I went straight to my room and threw myself on the bed, opening to the spot where I’d stopped reading. I read through the night. When my mother came to tell me to get ready for school, I feigned illness and skipped my formal studies. By three in the afternoon, I closed the book thoroughly satisfied.
The third book also belongs to the horror genre. I read this book a few months ago after picking it up in the bookstore and falling in love with it. “Teig snapped awaked behind the wheel and hit the brakes, but the tires found only ice.” The Kolyma Highway in eastern Siberia historically earned the name Road of Bones, as the book by Christopher Golden is titled. It is estimated that up to one million forced laborers rest interred beneath or along it.
What if there was something else that lived along the desolate road and rural villages far from modern civilization? Stephen King say it is “Tightly wound, atmospheric…will scare the hell out of you.” Not as frightening as Swan Song, but excellent nonetheless.
Next, I want to delve into science fiction—another of my favorite genres to read and write. James S. A. Corey is a combination of two writers. You may have seen the Amazon Prime six-season series. The authors wrote a series of books called The Expanse.
The first book tempted me for over a year when I saw the cover and read the description on the back. But I never actually read any of its words to see if I wanted to buy it. Then one day I did. “The Scopuli had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot.” After being hit in the face with those words, I bought it immediately. I have all nine plus the anthology of short works set in the same universe. Don’t regret it one bit.
Adrian Tchaikobsky is another writer that I noticed for years before finally picking up. The first book of his I read is The Expert System’s Brother. What did it for me? The first line: “It went wrong for me when they made Sethr an outcast.” For some reason, that gave me a Peter Pan vibe. A sense of adventure. A tale to be told around campfires. The whole thing drove my imagination wild. An outcast from what? Where are they?
The next science fiction book is from a friend of mine. Assassins Incorporated by Phillip Drayer Duncan. He is one of the few writers whose comedy I will read and enjoy. The opening line, “People are stupid, thought Rharo Statis, that’s why its so easy to take their money” grabbed my attention. Those first three words often come out of my mouth whenever I drive on the streets and highways. The tale revolves around young Brandon who just wants to be good at his job, but everyone else is either against him or trying to kill him.
A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe tells us about one E. A. Smithe, a clone possessing an uploaded personality recording of a dead mystery writer and living in a library where people can “check” him out. Probably best known for his far-future series Book of the New Sun, Mr. Wolfe opens the book: “Murder is not always such a terrible thing.” How could I not be caught up in the ensuing adventure?
I met Kay Kenyon at a conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma once. If she has a book coming out, you can be certain I am going to add it to my shelves. Not on the to-be-read section, but to-be-read-first shelf. What I think is her best series—The Entire and the Rose—starts off in the third book City without End with a sentence that will not let you do anything but read on: “He still had dirt under his fingernails from his grave.” Incredible first line!
Two of my favorite books are bringing up the rear. Not only are they much-loved stories that represent two of the greatest fantasy trilogies of all time, but their opening sentences also exude adventure. They make me dream of far-off lands filled with danger and quests, heroism and courage.
The first is The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams. This is the first book in his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. The very first sentence immediately cements the setting in the reader’s mind. “On this day of days there was an unfamiliar stirring deep inside the dozing heart of the Hayholt, in the castle’s bewildering warren of quiet passages and overgrown, ivy-choked courtyards, in the monk’s holes and damp, shadowed chambers.”
Since reading this book—his second published novel—I have devoured everything he has written. Especially in relation to the world of Osten Ard. He has a second four-book series in the same setting that came out thirty years after the first book. I am eagerly awaiting the fourth and final volume.
And last, but definitely not least, is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. “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.”
You can’t beat it. Not in my mind. I have read The Lord of the Rings an average of once a year since I found it in a box of books belonging to my maternal grandfather after he had passed. It will always hold a special place in my heart because I get something new and different out of it each time I open its pages.
What opening lines have set your heart racing? Let me know.
