If I made a list of my 10 finalist openings, the 1st opening I read for today would be on it! It’s a triumph of a historical fantasy mystery. Perfectly written and totally charming.
2 other openings didn’t work for me.
(Covers with Cassidy group)
113) Suzannah Rowntree @suzannahrowntree.bsky.social, Tall & Dark
A governess in Vienna invents a persona to make money on the side as a medium, except her séances are anything but a trick – but little does she understand the world of the dead that she is playing in.
I’m wow’d. This historical, steampunk fantasy mystery’s opening is pitch perfect. It is a delight. It is perfectly measured. Cozy, quirky, humorous, tender, surprising, even frightening – the story effortlessly unfolds before the reader. I never wanted to stop reading.
Sometimes an opening is so flawless, there’s really little to say about it other than to beg everyone to read it. This is one of those openings.
Our female MC is positioned firmly at the center of the first-person narrative. She is an endearing protagonist. She makes mistakes, but she’s doing her best to make her way in the world and send money home to her sick mother.
She is not vindictive towards the apparent nonbelievers who condescend to attend her séance. She regrets taking what may be a young man’s last 20 kronen. But despite the drops she’s put in her eyes to make them dilate (for effect) she is not putting on a show. Maybe she really can help him.
As ever in the best stories, things do not go as planned. “So, it was a bad beginning,” our MC confesses. But her mistakes make this opening all the more of a delight.
Our MC has a gift. She is using it to the best of her abilities, but she is decidedly not a professional, and the truth is all some people want IS a show.
The tone of this reminded me of the best cozy mysteries. All the descriptions and dialogue ground the story beautifully in its setting. Everything about this is a triumph. Everything.
This is as good of a first chapter as I’ve read anywhere, ever. Were I to choose ten finalist openings, this would surely be one of them. Yes, yes, yes. This is an achievement. 1st in a series! Buy it! I did.
I’m gloriously in!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59473431-tall-dark
114) Shanti Leonard, Od and Ed
Magic kids move things with their powers … except maybe the house is magic actually. I’m not sure.
This is okay. It is overwritten at times, reaching for a kind of poeticism that I don’t think lands. The omniscient narration resists choosing a character to focus on.
Chapter 1 introduces a conceit, but without direction. I find myself struggling to invest in anything that happens. Maybe that’s an issue with POV. Maybe it’s an issue with style. Maybe it’s a lack of motivation.
There’s kids showing off that they can do magic. Something happens, I guess, and they tell the kid they’re showing off to that he needs to leave. He leaves. Chapter over.
I wanted more. More of an introduction of who these characters are. More of a sense of what they want and what keeps them from getting it. More of an introduction of our setting. For me, there’s too little here. I pass.
115) WB Biggs, Stone-Cold Alibi
This urban fantasy begins in mundane New Orleans as a fairly by the numbers noir procedural. It’s overwritten tho, leaning hard on its world-weary poeticisms, but without much story or characters.
There’s a detective mc, but we learn almost nothing about him except that he’s new in town. There’s a murder case that’s awful gruesome, and yet we learn precious little about it as well.
Our mc begins his investigation, but his questions are not pointed and the answers are not informative. I might be more engaged if I had any sense of what makes this murder case anything but routine.
If the point is that it SEEMS routine, I would have liked to spend less time on the hum-drum routine of it all and get to the turn. No amount of prose about moody skies and smelly diners can ever take the place of a good story. And I say this as a lover of the genre. I pass.
Tom Mock 
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