#OpeningSentence

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.

— Blade of Dream de Daniel Abraham

Carl was twelve years old the first time he laid eyes on the Grand Abeona Hotel.

— Floating Hotel de Grace Curtis

With the guardian dead, the question remained: Who would do it?

— The West Passage de Jared Pechaček

The boy was taken upstairs without warning, unprotesting as he had been through all the changes in his seventeen years, the shifts from cell to cell each time he outgrew the bolt on his ankle and the Doctor came to exchange it for a larger one, an operation performed with a tool the Hold people called the Mallet, which jarred the whole leg and sometimes made the blood spray from the anklebone, and caused a sense of queasiness and superstitious awe in the boy, who would glimpse, for the instant during which the bolt and chain were removed, the shiny and alien-looking patch of underexposed skin on his leg which, according to the prophet, housed the seat of the soul.

— Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain de Sofia Samatar

There were many things Asuka did not consider when she agreed to travel from one sun to another.

— The Deep Sky de Yume Kitasei

You are alone when you die.

— Archive Undying de Emma Mieko Candon

The largest private collection of rare artifacts from other worlds could be found in central New Jersey at Princeton University, and if anyone knew Maya Hoshimoto was a thief, they wouldn’t have let her anywhere near there.

— Stardust Grail de Yume Kitasei

They say never start a story with a waking, but when you’ve been hard asleep for thirty years it’s difficult to know where else to begin.

— Alien Clay de Adrian Tchaikovsky

‘Humans are a necessary annoyance,’ my mother had said to me.

— Space Dragons: Luxorian's Crew de Veo Corva

We were waiting for things to converge.

— Dirt Town de Hayley Scrivenor

"The king wishes to be cooked alive," the royal secretary said, accepting the proffered saucer and cup and immediately setting both aside.

— Hexologists de Josiah Bancroft (The Hexologists, #1)

“Your mother is going to be a star,” said the man in the gray uniform.

— Counterweight de Djuna, Anton Hur

Captain Darian Frey was accustomed to long odds; his whole life, he’d been an outside chance. Lacking the ability to win in a fair fight, he survived instead by guile and the illogical optimism favoured by gamblers and drunks, which made the riskiest of plans seem like a good idea at the time.

— The Ace of Skulls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #4)

‘On reflection,’ Crake said to Frey, as they huddled behind an upturned table, ‘this wasn’t one of your better plans.’

— The Iron Jackal de Chris Wooding (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #3)

Darian Frey was a man who understood the value of a tactical retreat.

— The Black Lung Captain de Chris Wooding (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #2)