Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #55

It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from a current or upcoming read with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring my current read:

  

 

Beginning -- Prologue, Sixteen Years Ago

The world was on fire.

 

Or maybe she wasn't in the world any more.  Maybe this was Hell.  The heat, the taste of sulphur on her tongue, the sickness, the torment.  Screams rang through the air, relentless, monotonous, a one-pitch yell of despair.  She opened her eyes and saw a figure stooping over her; a hovering devil, with flaming red hair.  She tried to shout but all that came out was a rasping noise, and the devil's face was close, the brimstone smell of its breath in her nostrils.

 

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Chapter 1  -- Present Day

 

The woman lying on the bunk appeared to be dead, until she sneezed; the violent motion making her skinny body spasm.  She opened bloodshot eyes and lifted an arm, trying to pull a tissue from the box on the bedside cabinet.  But as she reached out, her body spasmed again and she knocked the box to the floor.  Too weak to pick it up, she lay still, until a further series of sneezes rocked her body like gunshots.

 

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Page 56 (from the ebook):  "He just had one of those faces which made her want to smile: a lovely curved mouth, great big brown eyes, and the sort of floppy hair which she had adored in Robbie Williams in her teenage years."

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My thoughts -- The descriptive scenes in the prologue and first chapter drew me in immediately, and there's enough mystery in the opening chapters to keep me turning the pages.

Which book are you reading now or about to start?
 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #55 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.