You've Got Five Pages, Alchemised by SenLinYu, to Tell Me You're Good.

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!Now I admit that I was hesitant at first when I opened the book and saw a prologue. But thankfully, this prologue did its job. In its single page, we meet Helena as she struggles to keep her memories while in "stasis," a sensory deprivation container where she is jolted with electricity every few hours until "someone" comes to get her. Only that someone does not come. Helena loses her sense of time, but she knows her purpose: "She had to stay ready."Not that she tells readers what that means. And that's okay. I don't want an exposition dump in the prologue. Chapter 1 starts with two men discovering Helena, who was "stored wrong," and she lashes out to try and escape even though her senses are completely overwhelmed. They knock her out, and she wakes to hear a woman speak of carrying her to "Central" because there are no prisoner records of Helena, and yet she has two numbers. She's also alive and literally kicking, unlike most of the other statis residents.I tip my hat to SenLinYu for using Helena's lack of senses for storytelling purposes. Helena can't see or move around much, so the only input Helena--and therefore readers--can get in these early pages is through dialogue. And SenLinYu uses that dialogue to accomplish some quick worldbuilding without overwhelming the readers. There's a High Necromancer mentioned, and the woman orders that any corpses in stasis chambers should be reanimated for labor.WHAAAAAT?But the dust jacket did mention necromancy, and here we are on the third page of the book hearing about the necromancy. There's also a degree of science involved in this world, too, for Helena was in some sort of special gel and often jolted with electricity. And on top of all that, there is also magic besides necromancy, for the woman alters Helena's senses to make it easier for her to use her eyes.The prose style here is solid, too. SenLinYu reminds me a little of Lee Child, putting a mix of short and long sentences to use so that the narrative pacing is fast without the prose feeling choppy. A good example comes when Helena is first awoken by the men going through all the stasis chambers."Light was stabbing her. A spike driven through her eyes, burrowing into her skull. Gods, her eyes.She writhed. The brightness blurred, careening. The burn of fluid rushed down her throat. A roar in her ears."If the first five pages are any indication, SenLinYu's got a lovely debut on their hands. And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?We'll have to wait and see. xxxxRead on, share on, and write on, my friends!