Tom Mock

Landbringer | Sigils & Sushi | Of Wind And Lightning | To Dance With Dragons |

I wanted to read more of a voice-driven dystopian steampunk. 3 other openings didn’t quite grab me.
(From Covers with Cassidy)

172) Karen H Lucia, Landbringer

This first-person fantasy leads with voice and does a good job of establishing the conversational patter of its young narrator.

It opens on an otherworldly scene of jumpers waiting for their chosen airship, choking on the fumes of the open air. The raid begins. It’s active and impactful.

The narration is maybe a little overwritten. We wait a good while for something to finally happen. We’re ready to jump, but the jump is put off and put off in favor of commentary from our MC that is more style than establishing substance.

It’s absorbing stuff, but as it goes on the story begins to drag. The leap finally comes. The action is full of grounding, active details, but maybe just a little too full.

All the particulars slow the pace and begin to feel repetitive: the danger of the environment, the fear of a deadly fall, the need to succeed.

In place of these physical details that keep us locked on our MCs immediate experience, I found myself wanting more grounding in the context of what is happening and who is doing it and why.

Our vagabond gang are all young, most much younger than 20. I don’t know why they’re all so young, but it’s interesting. I would have liked to understand more about them and why they’re driven to this deadly peril.

These things are just barely hinted at. I feel I understand more about the establishment magic users with their white flashes of deadly magic, perhaps because they seem straightforward enough.

Character details are hard to come by. There are almost no names to speak of, and the other vagabonds are reduced to a “girl” or a “boy” whether or not we hear about their expressions.

Our MC has been with this group a while, we learn, but not everyone survives long, and that’s reason to dissociate from any newcomers, but still, something to add more context to these people would have been nice for me.

While a more concise, active start with more pointed establishing details would have made this an out and out triumph for me, it’s still an engaging beginning with a compelling, flawed MC who has been through a great deal in her short life.

I want to know more about her and this world, and I’m curious about how she’s gotten out of the terrible situation she ended ch1 in (if she did get out), not to mention my anticipation of the queer romance turn (always welcome).

Despite the fact that I think this does too much in some places and not quuiite as much as I might like in others, the prose is competent and engaging, the voice is terrific, and the dystopian steampunk setting comes alive. It’s done enough for me to read on. I’m in.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75436316-landbringer

173) Nia Quinn, Sigils & Sushi

A low-wage clerk who checks in used cars can kinda use magic in a world of magical creatures.

This voice-driven opening has a very conversational tone and some interesting magical details. The idea that our MC frequently finds little magical doodads left behind in the rental cars is fun.

Although such magical items are referenced, we don’t quite get a sense of how they’re useful to her – if she can sell them or if sometimes they come in handy somehow.

It’s still an intriguing idea, nonetheless—a magical world where we focus on a lowly, plucky MC rather than someone powerful.

However strong the voice of this 1st person narration may be, the narrative of the opening lacks a developing story. Our MC and her vibe, daily life, and limited magical abilities are what this opening centers on.

Things happen to her, but they are ordinary things (for her). Cars get returned to the rental location. She processes them. She waves at coworkers. Some kind of imp thing bothers her a little bit.

The narrative spends some paragraphs in expositional diversions about her being able to control tattoos somehow. This does not because particularly relevant as she goes back to her ordinary job.

The events of the opening are commonplace. It does not appear that there is really anything happening.

There is something to be said for establishing an MCs normalcy before disrupting it, but I feel this has been too slow to develop.

It begins with a great sense of promise—wonderous items left in rental cars—but then seems to forget about the idea. It introduces some kind of bitey imp, but doesn’t expand on it, really.

Our MC can do stuff with tattoos, but tho were introduced to the fact, nothing yet comes of it.

The voice is fun, but with how many openings I have to get through, this hasn’t begun succinctly enough nor established any problem or developing conflict to keep my interest. I pass.

174) Ella Walker Henderson, Of Wind And Lightning

A messenger, belonging to some kind of special race or clan that can run really fast, aspires to freedom from her pledged servitude to the king.

While feeling more active than my previous read, this opening didn’t grab me. It is largely expositional, though by movement, but leaves me less oriented in the story than I’d like.

That movement features our MC stuck in the crowd, some of whom move aside out of deference. She also almost tramples a kid with her horse, which she feels terrible about, before she runs really fast out in the desert.

I single these moments out because they begin to give us a sense of our MCs character and her position in the world of the story.

And yet this opening still feels drawn out to me. The exposition does not follow a clear train of thought, and is vague about things I’m interested in understanding.

Our MC apparently transgresses on the orders of the king by taking a shortcut outside the walls of the city, and yet this does not feel significant. She does it on a whim. It feels trivial.

Her desire for freedom and the exultation of speed in contrast to the crowded city streets and rigid servitude of her lowly messenger takes is, I think, the core of this opening, and I like this idea very much.

I feel it was presented awkwardly, tho, distracted by particulars of horse riding and laundry hanging to dry and the near accident with the boy and our MCs emotions about that.

These things drag our attention away from what this opening feels like it wants to be about, which is, as near as I can tell, something like the following:

Some order of people (to which our MC belongs) pledged themselves to a regent. The regency changed, and, out of apparent fear, subjugated our MCs people to lesser service, but their identity (somehow) prevents them from breaking there oath.

Rankling under this subjugation, our MC disobeys the restrictions placed on her. The indiscretions are small, but they do not go unnoticed.

After her latest sprint out in the desert, like the caged bird stealing a moment of flight to itself, she hears from a friend close to the King that she is in danger of being punished.

This all sounds exactly like the beginning to an interesting story, but I’ve struggled with the text over several pages to come to this limited understanding.

The prose isn’t bad in any sense of the word. I find it descriptive and engaging beat by beat. But the story of this opening has been too awkwardly presented for me, at least for this silly assessment I’m doing. I pass.

175) Jaq D Hawkins, To Dance With Dragons

A young bride of an arranged marriage escapes across a dangerous river on her wedding day.

This starts in a brief flashback of some kind of deadly incident on the river that our young bride is now going to try to escape across. It’s a bit confusing.

Admittedly she was very young when whatever happened happened, and it seems like the subsequent talk of the town, or wherever she lives, is that the river is dangerous.

But she also seems to remember a goblin patting her on the head? And the goblins are what was in the water? And the goblin was walking open with an important person?

Anyway, there’s a dangerous river and our MC is going to risk crossing it. Why is something this opening takes for granted. Her betrothed is not a detail. It’s the marriage she’s risking her life to run from, not the man.

That something happens to her boat seems inevitable. What does begin to happen is rather drawn out. I find myself falling out of the narrative before anything is really revealed.

I’m not sure who our MC is beyond what’s happening to her. She’s plucky, you have to give her that at least. Were this more forthcoming about her circumstances so I could better sympathize what drove her to this desperation, that might have helped.

Death on the river seems like a certainty, so why not flee some other way? Is the idea that crossing the river guarantees no one will follow? Well, then where does she go?

By establishing what could be if she succeeds and if she does nothing at all (going through with an unwanted marriage), the reader can start to understand the stakes of the story.

What is our MC running away from? What is she running towards? What stands in her way? Is it worth the risk? To her, obviously it is. Knowing these things better, I could know our MC better. That’s where the story is.

As is, there’s too little here to hook me. I pass.

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