First Lines Fridays

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!

Midnight. The heart-of-summer sky was black; filled with stars, the cloudy sweep of the Milky Way. A waxing moon slowly rolled across, showing off her pockmarks and craters, looking down at a smaller, man-made galaxy: the gas and oil lamps, candles and lanterns of old London town, twinkling their brightest and – through a haze of smog – bravely trying to outdo the heavens themselves.

Any ideas?

I’m a huge fan of The Five Realms series, so am really looking forward to this as my next read.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Sheba the wolf girl joins an unusual troupe of performers that includes Pyewacket, a witch’s imp; Gigantus the giant and Sister Moon, a knife thrower. For the first time in her life she feels she might make true friends, and learn a real stage craft. But soon that’s not all she has to think about . . .

Children are being sucked into the Thames and there have been strange sightings of a mechanical monster. The carnival troupe know first-hand that looks only tell half a story – they become determined to find these forgotten children. Perhaps they will unravel the mystery that has defied even the law!