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!
• 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!

Hello & happy Friday! For this weeks FLF post I’m focusing on a new novella I recently got my hands on by one of my all time favourite authors. I’ve only started reading Novella’s over the past year or so but have been seriously impressed at how much story some authors can get into so few pages. I’m really excited to pick this one up, and with it being so small, I’m hoping to do it sooner rather than later.

“Only the moon spied on the woman from behind a cloud as she stumbled across the narrow and twisted alleyways, one hand brushing against a wall, trying to remain upright. Her other hand was pressed against her side, blood seeping from the wound, blood on her fingertips.”

Sounds good right? If the authors other works are anything to go by I’m pretty sure I will end up loving this. Ready to find out what it is?

Yalxi, the deposed Supreme Mistress of the Guild of Sorcerers, is on a desperate mission. Her lover and confidant seized her throne and stole the precious diamond heart, the jewel that is the engine of her power. Yalxi sets out to regain her magic and find a weapon capable of destroying the usurper. But this will mean turning to unlikely allies and opening herself up to unpleasant memories that have been suppressed for many years. For Yalxi is no great hero, but a cunning sorceress who once forged her path in blood – and must reckon with the consequences.