Tag: epic fantasy

Hi readers and welcome back to another First Lines Friday post!

I’m looking forward to sharing the opening lines of this week’s featured book. I am in love with this book, as well as the rest of the series it is the introduction to. They are books I know I will go back to and read again and again – they will never get old!

Can you guess the book from the introduction?

 

‘We should start back,’ Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. ‘The Wildlings are dead’.

‘Do the dead frighten you?’ Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.

Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. ‘Dead is dead,’ he said. ‘We have no business with the dead.’

‘Are they dead?’ Royce asked softly. ‘What proof have we?’

‘Will saw them,’ Gared said. ‘If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough for me.’

Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. ‘My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,’ he put in.

‘My wet nurse said the same thing, Will,’ Royce replied. ‘Never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead.’ His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.

 

 

Shall we find out what it is?

 

A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin

Goodreads – A Game of Thrones

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

 

Purchase links:  Amazon UK     Amazon US     Waterstones

 

Even if you haven’t read the books but watched the series, you probably recognised this by the early reference to the Wildlings. I love A Game of Thrones. I’ll hold my hands up and say I am obsessed because it’s true!

I first bought these books on Kindle in January/February 2012. Based on my order history on Amazon, I must have read this first book and then decided to buy the next few of the series in one go. My first time reading this book pre-dates my Goodreads account, so it’s a best guess. I have actually re-read this book a further two times, the latest in November 2018. I’ve gone on to read the rest of the series again too, with just the last part of A Dance with Dragons to go to complete the re-read.

Do you love A Game of Thrones? Have you read the series at all, or more than once? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

 

***Please note this post contains affiliate links, meaning that I will earn a small commission on purchases made through them. If you like what you read and are interested in purchasing a copy of the book(s) featured in this post, please consider using these links and supporting a book blogger!

Thank you!***

 

Welcome back to another First Lines Friday post! It’s the end of another week and we can all look forward to a fabulous weekend!

Before that though, it’s time to share the opening lines of another brilliant read. This is a book I read a long time ago. I took the notion when drafting last week’s Sunday Summary post to feature a book that I read before I started my blog. I’ve wracked my brains and I think I’ve come up with a great feature for you today.

Can you guess the book from the introduction?

 

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of the night. If there had been music… but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice.

 

 

Shall we find out what it is?

 

The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Goodreads – The Name of the Wind

Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet’s hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.

 

Purchase Links –  Amazon UK     Amazon US     Waterstones

 

I loved reading The Name of the Wind as a teenager and I can’t wait for book three, Doors of Stone, to be published. I’ll have to re-read these when it does though – it’s been a long time since I read these.

Did you enjoy today’s First Lines Friday post and extract of The Name of the Wind? Is it on your list to read as well? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

 

***Please note this post contains affiliate links, meaning that I will earn a small commission on purchases made through them. If you like what you read and are interested in purchasing a copy of the book(s) featured in this post, please consider using these links and supporting a book blogger!

Thank you!***