Friday Firsts is a new meme that runs every Friday over on Tenacious Reader. The idea is to feature the first few sentences/paragraph of your current book and try and outline your first impressions as a result. This is a quick and easy way to share a snippet of information about your current read and to perhaps tempt others.  Stop on by and link up with Tenacious Reader.    This Friday I’m reading :  Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

I found Borne on a sunny gunmetal day when the giant Mord came roving near our home.  To me, Borne was just salvage at first.  I didn’t know that he would change everything.

Borne was not much to look at that first time: dark purple and about the size of my fist, clinging to Mord’s fur like a half-closed stranded sea anemone.  I found him only because, beacon-like, he strobed emerald green across the purple every half minute or so.

Come close, I could smell the brine, rising in a wave, and for a moment there was no ruined city around me, no search for food and water, no roving gangs and escaped, altered creatures of unknown origin or intent.  No mutilated, burned bodies dangling from broken streetlamps.

Instead, for a dangerous moment, this thing I’d found was from the tidal pools of my youth, before I’d come to the city.  I could smell the pressed-flower twist of the salt and feel the wind, knew the chill of the water rippling over my feet.  The long hunt for seashells, the gruff sound of my father’s voice, the upward lilt of my mother’s.  The honey warmth of the sand engulfing my feet as I looked toward the horizon and the white sails of ships that told of visitors from beyond our island.  If I had ever lived on an island. If that had ever been true.

The sun above the carious yellow of one of Mord’s eyes.

My First Impressions

Wow, what a start.  I’m fascinated already and that’s just from a few scant sentences cast into paragraphs.  Ruined cities, salvage – and escaped altered creatures.  I’m excited to read this.

What you reading this Friday??  What are your first impressions??

*The above excerpt was taken from an advanced reader copy and it is possible that the final version may have further changes.