First Lines Friday

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

The storm appeared without warning. Morbid clouds moved over the horizon, eclipsing the distant blue as though an enormous blanket was being pulled across the sky. One milliday Orin Crowfall was gazing at the cobalt sea, then it became muddy green, and in no time at all, it was an angry brown, and the breeze had become powerful enough to ruffle his cropped brown hair.

Any ideas?

Vashti is a must-buy author for me. I’ve adored all of her fantastic adventure books, and was lucky enough to be able to arrange a virtual author visit for our Year 4 classes on Tuesday this week which was fantastic! I was very excited to find I had been sent an early copy of Crowfall the next day which has jumped to the top of my TBR!

Waterstones Synopsis:

Ironhold is an orderly place where “industry brings prosperity”, and where nature is pushed aside for progress. But when Orin Crowfall, a lowly servant boy, learns that the island itself is in grave danger, that knowledge makes him a target of powerful forces. He narrowly escapes on a small boat, but then faces a fight for survival with his robot friend, Cody, in the stormy ocean, pursued by a terrifying sea monster.

Can they make it to safety, somewhere beyond the horizon? And will Orin find a way back to save his family before everything is destroyed? To succeed, Orin will need to dig deep for courage, trust in new friends, and, ultimately, have faith in himself.

This is fantasy adventure at its finest: riotous adventure, memorable characters, incredible world building, and a powerful, thought-provoking message about ecological balance.