Wyoming game warden Joe Picket stood on the edge of the tarmac with his hands thrust into the pockets of his parka and his gray Stetson clamped on tight against the cold wind. It was a week until his birthday and his leg hurt and the brisk chill made him feel all of his fifty-one years on the planet.

His first glimpse of the $65 million Gulfstream G650ER private jet was of a gleaming white speck high above the rounded, snowcapped peaks of the Bighorn Mountains to the West.

It was a cloudless mid-October morning, but it had snowed an inch during the night and the ten-mile-an-hour breeze cleared the concrete of the runway, rolling thin smoky waves of flakes across the pavement of the Saddlestring Municipal Airport. The timbered mountains had received three to five inches that would likely melt away in the high-altitude sun, but the treeless summits looked like the white crowns of so many bald eagles standing shoulder to shoulder against the clear blue sky.

“Cold this morning,” Brock Boedecker said.

“Yup.”

REVIEW OF BOOK OPENING

I have decided from now on that I will only review the first book in a series, so my apologizes to C. J. Box for picking on Dark Sky. Since this is the twenty-first Joe Pickett novel there is already a loyal base of readers who are anxious to go on their next Joe Pickett adventure, so having a hook at the beginning may not be seen as important.

Still, someone who had no idea who Joe Pickett is may find themselves picking this book up at a bookstore and reading the first page. I found this book because it was on Stephen King’s personal recommendation list of books he has recently enjoyed, which was high praise indeed.

I included the first three paragraphs and two additional lines of dialogue so that you could get a feel for the world that C. J. Box has created. This book is categorized as a Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense, but I suspect most of the readers will be fans of cowboys and ranchers. The opening does a great job of setting the tone for the book, but because I read the book blurb I know there is an exciting story coming, it’s just a shame that it isn’t hinted at on the first page.

The multi-million dollar jet far up in the sky is a hint at the story to come, but wouldn’t it have been more exciting if the book started with the plane on the runway and the author began the book with the out of place contrast between the rich man who just landed and rugged countryside and men that were there to greet him. It would be a great opportunity to use some internal and external dialogue to reveal their mutual dislike of each other.

The blurb reveals that Joe Picket, a Wyoming game warden, must accompany a Silicon Valley CEO on a hunting trip but soon learns that he himself may be the hunted.

The jacket blurb is far more intriguing than this opening page. There is nothing in the book opening that grabs me or hooks my attention. I know a little about the rugged characters and the landscape, and I see the kind of lackluster dialogue one would expect from an introverted cowboy who isn’t particularly chatty.

So as someone who knows nothing about the Joe Picket novels, if I picked this book up and read the first page, I would set it back on the shelf. If I had read the blurb, my attention would be peaked, and I’d give the book a few more page turns.

The full description on Amazon is even better, but I felt it gave away so much of the book that predicting the ending may be fairly easy, especially since authors don’t tend to kill off their main protagonist in the twenty-first novel.

I’m giving this a two and a half stars out of five, the half of star because this book is the twenty-first in the series. I should also note there is some really nice writing just a couple more paragraphs down, but again, this is not a review of the book (Which has a near-perfect rating on Amazon (SEE HERE) but only on the book opening.

NOTE: There is a typo on the first page, and I have included it here because that is how it was printed.

John Reinier

The post Dark Sky (A Joe Pickett Novel Book 21) appeared first on Book Opening.

Adam Salton sauntered into the Empire Club, Sydney, and found awaiting him a letter from his grand-uncle. He had first heard from the old gentleman less than a year before, when Richard Salton had claimed kinship, stating that he had been unable to write earlier, as he had found it very difficult to trace his grand-nephew’s address. Adam was delighted and replied cordially; he had often heard his father speak of the older branch of the family with whom his people had long lost touch. Some interesting correspondence had ensued. Adam eagerly opened the letter which had only just arrived, and conveyed a cordial invitation to stop with his grand-uncle at Lesser Hill, for as long a time as he could spare.

REVIEW OF BOOK OPENING

Bram Stoker is a master of classic horror, with the Gothic novel, Dracula to his credit. But one should keep in mind the time period in which The Lair of the White Worm was written (1911) before I spill the beans on my thoughts of this introduction. (Dracula was written in 1897)

I’m sure if Bram Stoker were to write this novel today, he would make a great many changes. But this is BookOpening.com and I’m here to review the opening of books, and I have to admit that this book opening does not work for me.

The mysterious letter held some promise, but it was quickly dispelled of any mystery by the end of the paragraph in which it was introduced. The entire introductory paragraph relies more on telling than the showing. The idea that “some interesting correspondence had ensued” would be much better if he had given us a glimpse of such correspondence, and maybe something that would make us want to know more.

To sum up this book opening, a young man gets a letter from an older gentleman whom he is distantly related to, and he is excited to receive said letter which invites him to come for a visit.

There is no beautiful prose, I know nothing about the protagonist at this point and he doesn’t appear to have any desire or needs. I just have an invite for a visit, so at least there is a hint of a possible journey. The rest of the first page doesn’t get any better I’m afraid.

For me, this is a 2 out of 5 Book Opening.

John Reinier

Be sure to let me know what you think of this book opening, by voting yourself and leaving your own review or comments below.

The post The Lair Of The White Worm – Bram Stoker appeared first on Book Opening.

I COULD HAVE BECOME a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It has been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

REVIEW OF BOOK OPENING

Quite simply one of the best book openings I have ever read, for so many reasons. Right away you realize that the robot is an artificial intelligence and that the book opens with its point of view. This AI has hacked its governor module, which we don’t know exactly what it means, but we have a pretty good guess (vagueness is better than specifics in this case) and that isn’t going to be a good thing for the humans it encounters. The AI is so human-like that it finds itself addicted to entertainment and aware that as a murderbot (a goal it seems to have for itself) it is a failure. WOW. Oh, don’t forget the intriguing part where it says “still not much murdering”, which implies that there has been SOME.

I was so intrigued and drawn in by the VOICE of the AI, and the questions this paragraph left me with, that I put it on the top of my read list. It will be the very next book I read. I promise, murderbot!

5/5 for me!

John Reinier

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WHEN THE SHOE DROPPED INTO her lap, the foot was still in it.

She flung it into the air with a shriek. The bloodied mass hung in weightless suspension before being sucked out of the massive hole in the side of the aircraft. On the floor next to her seat, a flight attendant crawled up the aisle screaming for the passengers to put their oxygen masks on.

REVIEW OF BOOK OPENING

The opening line of this novel had me 100%. It’s short, concise, and utterly terrifying, or is it? Perhaps someone just tossed their feet (or, in this case, a single foot) into someone’s lap? Was it a lover, or a child putting a foot in a mother’s lap? My horror drops slightly as I ponder non-horrifying things until I get to the next line. It could be a young girl or a woman, I still don’t know, but the foot wasn’t attached to any person.

Such a great visual on the next line, with it being suspended weightlessly in the air for a moment before it was sucked out of the massive hole in the side of the aircraft. WOW… all of that in three lines! Imagine what she can do in the space of an entire novel.

In the first four lines opening this book, I already have a series of questions. 1) Who is this poor girl? 2) Who lost their foot? 3) How did this person get separated from their foot. 4) What caused the hole in the plane 5) Is the plane going to crash?

This is one of the best openings on a book that was not even on my radar before reading the first page. I immediately added it to my have to read soon pile.

5/5 Top Notch

John Reinier

Read It On Amazon

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