This skull’s quite the chatterbox…

As writers, we hear all the time that we’ve got to hook readers in just the first few pages or else. We’ve got to hook agents in the first few pages or else.

Whether you’re looking to get published or just hoping to hook your reader, first impressions are vital. Compelling opening scenes are the key to catching an agent or editor’s attention, and are crucial for keeping your reader engaged.
JEFF GERKE, THE FIRST FIFTY PAGES

This month I snagged from the New Release shelf:

The Dungeon Book by Gareth Hanrahan

Here’s yet another example of a cover that caught my attention. Between the woodcut style and the “As told by Cornelius the Skull” bit on the cover, I was ready to give this story a go.

And I’m glad I did! Even though Gareth Hanrahan technically has a prologue with his single-page poem “The Rule of the Dungeon,” that poem does lovely work applying a sing-song rhyme scheme and meter to convey important guidelines of this story’s setting to readers. It’s quick, it’s simple, and it transitions readers from our humdrum modern lives to a fantastical realm of dragons, monsters, and wizards in distant towers.

So far, though, the prose is both accessible and unique. The terminology is kept simple with only a few Medieval-esque words to give that sense of another time without making one feel lost in that time. Plus, there’s this tongue-in-cheek approach with the narrator who, even on page 1, alludes to measuring things with body parts he no longer has (“A hairline fracture, one might say, though it was a long time since I had the hair to make that comparison.”)

Hanrahan also effectively mixes the common and uncommon in fantasy literature. In the first chapter, the narrator tells the story of a dragon that lays waste to a castle while kidnapping a child. It’s told with moments of winding, fluid prose and extremely brief, staccato-like sentences that stab readers with the dragon’s violence. (“The castle burned. The people burned. The mother burned.”)

But the dragon doesn’t eat the child. Instead, the dragon brings the child to a wizard, and at the end of five pages, we don’t know why.

And that’s fine! These five pages have established a world, a monster, a mystery, and an unreliable narrator with style and grace. Oh yes, that narrator? It’s our skull, of course. Sure, the cover alludes to this, but what the cover does not allude to is that the skull is a wizard–so it says, anyway. (“Take it from me–wizards are liars. Worse, we are con artists.”) It’s a very promising setup that gives readers a lot to visualize and a lot to take in as far as voice and style. And as a writer, I appreciate toying around with what is familiar in fantasy novels and what is not, and also that balance of just providing these little tidbit allusions to something without stating it outright.

If you want an adventure in the dark where skulls speak with gargoyles and dungeons stretch through all of existence, I have a feeling you will enjoy this a great deal.

Let’s see what next month’s find will teach us, shall we?

Coming up, I’ve got some unreal ambiance, some more excellent tips from Story Empire, and a sad farewell. Stay tuned!

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!