You've Got Five Pages, The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey, to Tell Me You're Good.

NOTE: In the podcast, I refer to book 1 of this trilogy as The Captive's War, but that is the title of the whole trilogy. Book 1 is called The Mercy of Gods.-------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!So a huge disclaimer here: I grabbed the second book of a trilogy, which means we are NOT going to see much foundation work in the opening pages. We'll have to hit the ground running, and like it!Frankly, though, that's okay. It was nice to get into some science fiction for a change, and Corey's got a lovely style to his voice. The first couple of pages aren't a prologue per se--more like an historical tidbit akin to all the histories of Paul Moadib that begin the chapters of Dune. That historical bit is only a few paragraphs, but it's almost lyrical in its sadness about a dying world, how it's seen in the crops, fish, and lost voices of the elders. It's a relatable moment: any reader could sense what this would feel like in their culture. Any culture has its feelings about end-times. And this book begins with that bit of foreboding. It doesn't outstay its welcome, either--after a few paragraphs, we move on to the proper first chapter.Now the first couple of pages are all these snippets of librarian records. I was amused by just how many librarians there are--my kind of alien society, I guess. :) I gather that these records allude to things from the first book, so I can't really judge their merits. To Corey's credit, though, the next few pages bring readers up to speed on important past events, such as the failed human rebellion against their alien overlords--and that our human protagonist, Dafyd, was on the side of the aliens. Why? That I can't glean from these opening pages, but I have a feeling Book 1 (The Mercy of Gods) or subsequent pages of Book 2 will tell us. Overall, Corey's got an accessible style, one that balances relatable detail with the unrelatable alien world. If you're looking to jump off Earth for a while, Corey's trilogy is sure to lose you among the stars.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!