Tom Mock

Dawn of the Black Sun | My Name Is Not Alice | Copper Cold Steel |
I wanted to see more of two more fantasy openings: an action anime fantasy, and a contemporary YA Alice in Wonderland riff. A 3rd European Fantasy was too locked into its MC’s head and didn’t keep my interest.

(from Captured In Words)

145. Timo Burnham, Dawn of the Black Sun

That’s the prologue of this action fantasy. The 3rd person close prose is focused and establishes character and circumstance without undue detail.

The action is crisp, impactful, and written such that it not only sounds good but is easy to follow. This all makes the pace of this opening work wonders.

Our prologue MC feels like an antihero, maybe even a villain. He is disgusted with himself – with his weakened state and helplessness. He is slowly wasting away, dying of starvation and thirst.

He would rather end his life outright, if only he had a blade. But when a stranger appears who might be able to oblige his death wish, he cannot bear to surrender his life to an adversary.

This isn’t stated, but it is felt in a nice bit of character work. This opening also introduces a wonderful bit of magic in the form of a sentient sword.

The bargain our prologue MC makes with this weapon is as engaging as the fight preceding it. The narration resists explaining too much but does a great job of establishing the world we’re in piece by piece.

Glancing ahead to ch1, I find a more peaceful group of youths, one of which at least loves stories. I’m excited to find how these stories intersect. This is a sharp story with great pace so far. I’m in!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178555618-dawn-of-the-black-sun

146. Angelika Rust, My Name Is Not Alice

One of the things I personally dislike about many Stephen King novels is that they begin with prolonged mundanity that I often find boring. An ordinary Joe. Maybe he has a family. Maybe he’s a writer. He’s most certainly not doing anything interesting.

I don’t mean to talk about another author in place of this author, but it’s worth pointing to King by comparison because he is, by all measures, a great of our time regardless of how I personally respond to some of his beginnings.

This opens similarly, though with more color. Our popular choir girl MC is not the most popular girl in school. In fact, she is constantly secretly hating the most popular girl, who just seems so perfect, and who teases her for her name.

But maybe the quarterback is going to ask her to the dance. Maybe things are going to work out ok for her despite her many youthful personal failings that we recognize and that she, too, is vaguely aware of.

Her truest friend is a girl she cannot bear to be seen with because she is unpopular and fat. The text works overtime to emphasize that she is fat and her fat is bad and gross.

In the present tense, 1st person pov of the narration, this functions to underscore our MCs point of view – her own fears and foibles.

So far, it is all standard YA school stuff. Colorful, cliché, but with notes of layered inner tension for our MC. And then there’s the bent old woman with her little dog. She’s the one thing that doesn’t fit.

She stands out. I’m not yet sure what she’s doing literarily, but there’s something of a symbol to her rendering and her little dog that she can’t let off a leash because she’ll chase the rabbits down their holes.

It’s the one piece of oddity about the opening that breaks from the cliché, and along with what I feel is a dedicated rendering of a flawed but ultimately good-hearted youth, makes me take notice.

The experience of reading this opening is light, but pleasant. I could almost say it spends too long in the ordinary, but I don’t think so. Everything goes by at a decent pace. The narration doesn’t linger too long over anything.

And I reflect that without the popular girl, and the quarterback, and the choir masters favoritism and small town politics, and the outcast friend, that old woman wouldn’t stand out the way she does.

It’s interesting. I’m interested to see how this writing style will treat the fantastical. I’m interested to see how this characters life will be fantastically changed, and if it will change her.

I want to know what happens next. I want to turn the page. That’s the one thing any beginning must do, and this has done it. I’m in. What’s next, Alice?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29765706-my-name-is-not-alice

147. Sori Aryl, Copper Cold Steel

This next fantasy begins close on our female MC who trains with a sword and is going to Court for the first time in disguise as her father’s male heir. I think that sounds wonderfully interesting, but there’s some issues.

Mainly, it’s the total lack of establishing details regarding the story at hand. We hear just a little bit about the fact that our MCs mother died, but otherwise it seems like we’re in a generic European fantasy setting.

It might not be generic at all! But there are no greater world details here. I don’t even know there is a King and Queen until a sentence before they speak. This made it hard for me to invest in the world of the story.

As far as I can tell our MC belongs to some kind of landed house belonging to the gentry and having an heir is important. This I know mostly by inference. I don’t know anything else about the setting or the characters or their circumstances.

I don’t know anything about Court, about where it’s located, about what it means to go for the first time. I have no expectations except that it’s vaguely important. I have no sense that our MC’s disguise is effective or important.

I have no sense whether there is anything at stake regarding this heir identity stuff. Court is just that. It’s Court. Generic. Does our MC have to go? Is it dangerous? Is this just a whim? What does it matter? No idea.

Generally, I feel the opening is rushing along without grounding the reader in the circumstances of the character. I can’t tell the good news from the bad news. There really isn’t even any of either.

Our MC is told to behave at Court (because it could be bad if she doesn’t) and then her rather severe father leaves her alone with nothing whatever to do and she immediately gets in a fight with some kids her age.

It’s forced, to be sure. I think it IS fun, and the dialogue is good, and the prose is clear enough, but I’m underwhelmed. Nothing seems too terribly important and the story is easy to put down.

This is a debut, and it may shape up to be an enjoyable story in a fun, light fantasy world, but it’s started a bit rushed. It’s energetic, to be sure, but I almost want to ask the MC to stop and start again, because I feel I’ve been left out of too much. I pass.

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