First Chapter Tuesday is hosted every Tuesday by Diane over at Bibiophile by the Sea. This is meme in which bloggers share the first chapter of a book that they are currently reading or thinking about reading soon. Join the fun by making your own post and linking up over at Diane's blog, or simple check it out to find more new books to read!
Today's first chapter preview is from Sylvia Izzo Hunter's The Midnight Queen! I've had my eye on this lovely book for a while now and I am so excited to find out if it is as lovely and magical as that cover is! I love that it sounds like this book will feature some time in a school setting - Oxford's Merlin College! I have provided an excerpt of both the prologue and first chapter to really give you a feel. Let me know your thoughts!
The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter
"It was his own fault entirely, Gray reflected later. That morning in Merlin’s South Quad, when Taylor and Woodville had pressed him to join them in some not-quite-specified excursion, he ought to have known that no good would come of it; what good had ever come of Taylor and Woodville before?"
Chapter One
In Which Gray Meets Sophie
"Gray toiled in the midsummer sun, on his knees among the rhododendrons, through an afternoon that seemed to last a month. Beautiful, Callender Hall's gardens might be, but after only half a day he had already conceived a passionate hatred of them, and of flowering shrubs in particular. What was he doing in this distant corner of the kingdom, so far from all he knew? Why condemned to this sweaty, thirsty, apparently pointless labour? His eyes strung; his knees ached; his hands were scratched and sore. He missed his cramped, chaotic rooms at Merlin College with an unexpected intensity - and had even begun, in spite of everything, to miss the home of his childhood.
He had just begun to think, implausible, how much pleasanter retiring to that home for the Long Vacation might have been -- as though any such course had been open to him -- when he saw the girl striding across the lawn."
What do you think? Would you keep reading this? (And feel free to join in and make your own post!)
If you're enticed by this chapter, be sure to check out the full synopsis on Goodreads!
*Excerpt taken from the novel itself; I do not claim to own any part of the excerpt.
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