#OpeningSentence

The bot was immune to the snow, and so was Aras.

— City of Pearl by Karen Traviss (The Wess'har Wars, #1)

By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton’s narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive.

— Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang

The bells of the Palace of Stars were barely audible outside its walls.

— At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #2)

“Eighteen!” bellowed Viv, bringing her saber around in a flat curve that battered the wight’s skull off its spine.

— Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

And so it was that my mother went into labor while sitting astride the donkey that was carrying her from the city to our village.

— Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr, Marcia Lynx Qualey

A few years back I was running out of money so I volunteered for a research study at the University of Pennsylvania.

— Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

Stella Wallace met her family’s god when she was nine years old.

— Revelator by Daryl Gregory

Onna Gebowa had always liked numbers.

— Unnatural Magic by C. M. Waggoner

I was standing on a stranger’s doorstep and wishing my feet were nailed to the ground.

— Non-Player Character by Veo Corva

That morning, God was complaining again.

— City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky

In the course of a single life, a man can be many things: a beloved child in a brightly embroidered gown, a street tough with a band of knifemen walking at his side, lover to a beautiful girl, husband to an honest woman, father to a child, grain sweeper in a brewery, widower, musician, and mendicant coughing his lungs up outside the city walls. The only thing they have in common is that they are the same man.

— Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham (Kithamar, #1)