Fiction writing

If you’ve ever attended a fiction writing class or listened to a famous author talk about their craft, you’ll quickly learn the importance of opening lines. A perfect opener, the theory goes, will set up scene, character, plot, and tone. If you can do all this in the first paragraph, great. But better still if you can do it all — or at least most of it — in your opening sentence. As Stephen King said, “An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” This is the writer’s hook, the way to grab the reader and hold their attention. But not all opening lines are created equal. A Charles Dickens novel might have a first sentence that’s more than 100 words, while a classic of comparative stature might have just three: “Call me Ishmael.” yeremiah@aol.com Yeremiah Hardt

Fortunes Pawn

Book Report: Fortunes Pawn

I began Fortune's Pawn on Thursday January 16, 2020. I finished reading this space novel on Thursday March 5, 2020. It consisted of 320 pages. There are two other parts in this trilogy, Honors Knight and Heaven’s Queen. This book was written in November 2013.

Devi wants to be a Devastator. They go on the best missions and have the best armor and work directly for the king. Devi has made squad captain in less than a year.

"You can't apply to become a Devastor. They ask you."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 4

You cannot apply for anything in life, it all has to be granted to you by the powers you believe create you.

"We might both be from Old Earth, but a century of border wars carries a lot more weight than a shared ancestry from some Dead rock a thousand years ago."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 12

How long does family last. I say forever. Once you are in my family, I will do anything and everything to keep you there.

"Despite being the most populous race in the galaxy, beating out even humans for sheer numbers, the aeons stuck to their own sevalis and their own kind. I'd heard they disliked the other races, with a passion, bordering on violent xenophobia, which was a waste, because they were supposed to be the best navigators in the universe."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 16

Devi saw Rupert the cook and fell in love.

"My equipment is my life; I only buy quality."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 24

"In order to really use Paradoxian armor, you have to activate the neural net."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 25

"As my senses adjustment, my suit my suit became an extension of my own body. I could feel the flow under my armored knees and the slick surface of my suit beneath the artificial surface of my gloves like I was touching it with my own fingers. All my systems flickered on the edge of my thoughts: ammo, power, maps, chat systems, even my vision--were all ready and waiting to flick into my field of vision the second I thought of them."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 26

"It was stupid not to live your life to the fullest when you could die tomorrow."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 28

"Dominance is an animals game. You've got to give the animal part of your enemy time to understand they've been defeated otherwise you'll end up fighting the same fight a dozen times until they get it."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 40

Rupert was holding the captain hostage. Devi shot Rupert. It was an iniation test.

"There are four space-faring races in the galaxy: humans, aeons, legis, and xith'cal. Any of these could be dangerous under the right circumstances, but xith'cal were always dangerous."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 52

 Xith'cal hearing far surpasses humans. The crew had a Xith'cal doctor.

"All languages are but crude translations of the music of the cosmos. We are all of us struggling to speak to true meaning."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 60

"There is no top or bottom in space. We are all exactly where we are meant to be."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 60

"The unity of the Cosmos, we are those who have abandoned the terrestrial to live in harmony with the stars and search for the larger oneness that connects all things."

Nova

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 61

"Whole truth-usually just made things worse, anyway so I avoided them whenever I could."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 67

"The Xith'cal were screeching to one another, a cacophony of calls that sounded more like compcting metal than voices. Then one screech rose over the others, and order began to emerge from the chaos. The Xith'cal divided themselves. Ten began trying to circle Cotter, the obvious threat, the other five went for me."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 69

"There were three known Xith'cal tribes whose hunting grounds touched colonized space, and of them Reapers Fleet was the nastiest. Nastiest, but also furthest away."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 76

"Anything can be a test if you want to make it one."

Rupert

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 80

"Hyperspace was actually the safest place you could be, because when a ship goes into hyperspace it created it's own miniature dimension where it was the only thing that existed. What made jumping dangerous was time, or, more specifically, the time in hyperspace and the time in the real universe."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 83

"It had been the discovery of the hyperspace coil that had gotten humans off Old-Earth. Back then it wasn't uncommon for ships to vanish for years, sometimes even centuries, though their onboard clocks said they'd only been in hyperspace for a day or two. It was called time-dilation, and it was a huge problem."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 83 

"Getting into hyperspace was easy -- all you needed was enough energy of the right kind to jump out of reality, sort of like a fish jumping out of a creek, but the math of landing again at the right place and time was something else entirely. There were millions of variables involved in leaving hyperspace, and an error on any of them could mean coming out decades later than you'd planned to. For centuries this meant only the craziest ships used hyperdrive and everyone else stuck to what they could reach through near lightspeed travel."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 83

"The gates changed everything. They weren't even gates, really. "Gate" implies something you go through, but a hyperspace is nothing but a space-station-sized supercomputer capable of quickly and accurately doing the computations needed for safe jumps. A gate's math guaranteed you'd come out of hyperspace where and, more importantly when you wanted." 

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 83

"Human bodies aren't meant to change dimensions."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 85

"Life and death are equal parts of the universal harmony."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 85

Devi faught Rupert to work on her techniques. Devi couldn't figure out what Rupert was, his fighting technique was unlike anything she'd encountered before.

FWL means Final World Lock. Devi was searching for her captain while she ordered the crew to get back to the ship. Devi was in battle with what appeared to be a shrimp the size of a schoolbus. Devi fought the beast, however no one could find it. They were all going back to the ship.

"I knew something else had happened, something....strange, but I couldn't make my brain pull it up. It was just like a memory that was just floating just on the edge of my consciousness, but every time I reached out, it fitted away. It seemed to want to be forgotten. Gritting my teeth, I tried harder forcing to go over every detail I could recall."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 144

Caldwell wasn't a trader or smuggler.

"Unlike the Paradoxians, who never met a planet they couldn't terraform with bots before they'd even look at it, The Terran Republic is usually very good about cataloging the native life on colonies before they stamp it all out and repopulate with more human-friendly species." 

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 159

"Everyone has plasmex. It's a fundamental force of the universe, like gravity or the strong force inside atoms. Some humans are more sensitive to it than others, especially with daily practice, but everyone has at least a little. Well, biologically speaking, humans and aeons have the least plasmex sensitivity of the known races. Xith'cal have significantly more, and the lelgis are said to hold it as the core of their senses, but please don't let that disturb your harmony. The only thing that truly matters is that we are all connected through plasmex in great oneness that spans the whole of space time. On a universal scale like that, minor biological differences become insignificant."

Nova

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn pp. 165-166

"Remembering the past is impossible when you are one with the universe where time only moves forward."

Ren played chess against herself almost as a compulsion, definitely not for pleasure. She moved both sides so quickly. Devi found Ren frozen in the middle of her playing chess. Rupert just told Devi, Ren doesn't like to be disturbed while playing chess

"Humans and Xith'cal can breathe the same air, but Xith'cal prefer a good deal more arsenic in theirs."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 181

"I'd never seen a Lelgis, living or dead. Most people hadn't.  The Terrans had discovered them seventy years ago when they just appeared out of nowhere with an enormous fleet and demanded tribute. There'd been a brief war, and then some agreement had been struck and the Lelgis had pretty much kept to themselves ever since."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn pp. 181-182

"Xith'cal tribe ship heart is its trees, there death is the tribe's death."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 182

"We fight to eat and challenge, Lelgis are poison,  and they do not fight as we do."

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 183

"Our people lived underground before we were forced into space. Stoneclaw is an old tribe and keeps it's old ways.'

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 183

"The smart Xith'cal choose to be female--they live much longer. Females are also in charge of all sciences and technical aspects of Xith'cal society."

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 184

"Xith'cal eyes don't need the glaring light you humans seem to enjoy."

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 185

Devi got attacked by Xith'cal, because she went on their ship. She thought it was deserted.

"A Xith'cal jaws are it's most powerful weapon, made to crunch through their own steel-hard scales."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 188

Devi was saved from the Xith'cal attack by the black alien from Mycant

"Lelgis don't have genders."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 202

"Bone-knitting was expensive, but down soldiers were even pricer."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 206

"Xith'cal are born genderless. We live in the hatchery until we come of age, doing both male and female work, and then we pick a gender that suits us best. I didn't like either, so I didn't choose."

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 218

"It's not a common thing. Tribe structure is rigid. Everyone has a place. Females are our thinkers, males are our warriors, females run the ships, males hunt. A genderless adult doesn't fit into the established order, so you can see how life could be difficult for those who don't choose."

Hyrek

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 218

"Humans are a backwards sort of species that put one gender before the other. Seeing this, I've found it's much easier to be thought of as male rather than female, especially  looking as I do. And since designation is meaningless to me, I don't see why I shouldn't take the easier choice."

Rachel Bach 

Hyrek Fortune's Pawn p. 219

"There's something about the cold silence of space that helps put your life in perspective."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 233

"A creature was sitting on the ship not three not three feet in front of me. It was small about the size of a large cricket. I wouldn't have noticed it at all against the dark hull if not for the fact the creature glowed a soft blue-white light."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 224

"There is no better cure for a traitorous brain than exercise."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 236

"Love was the last thing I wanted. I had ambition. I had a career ahead of me. Love had ruined careers. It certainly seemed to be ruining mine, but I didn't know what to do about it. I felt helpless, like I just took a sucker punch for a fight I hadn't know I was in, and that made me feel more murderous than anything else. Nothing pisses me off like being weak."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 257

"Devi saw another bug, glowed  with the same blue-white light shining like a star shining in the darkened lounge, a long tail covered in a short glowing fuzz extended from one side and moved with tiny flicks propelling the creature through the air from her."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 264

"Most people's aura's are too faint too see much, but some are brighter. They change all the time, though, growing and shifting colors as the person changes."

Nova

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 266-267

"The universe is filled with phenomena beyond our compression. It's part of what makes life so beautiful."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 267

"It's awful the way some attack people who seek knowledge."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 268

"We could terraform planets and jump ships through dimensions, but no one had ever mastered real-time communication across the universe."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 271

"I did some checking with a contact who knows about this kind of thing, and he believes the scaled figure you described is a Terran weapon called a symbiont. They were used against us in the Border Wars, but the Terrans supposedly destroyed them all decades because of their extreme instability. Thanks to that, our info is a bit out of date, but I can tell you that symbionts are alien parasites, created in a lab and put into a human host."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn pp.  271-272

"Since we never caught a symbiont  alive to test, we don't know they're incredibly strong, fast, and damn near unkillable. They can also switch back and forth between the thing you described and their old human body. Don't let that fool you, though. Symbionts are not human. If you've really seen a symbiont, Devi, I need you to let me know right away. If the Terrans are breaking their treaties, I have to report it to the king's office immediately."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 272

Cotter died fighting symbionts

"There are things is this universe we do not understand. Things we cannot see, cannot detect, and yet they could wipe us out, all of us without even noticing we were here."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 288

"Phantoms and technology don't get along."

Brenton

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 289

"Phantoms break what we know about the rules of normal space. They move through the universe seemingly without a care for gravity, distance and they're attracted to habitable planets. Leave one there long enough and the whole planet starts to crumble." 

Brenton

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 289 

"The Lelgis are creatures of almost pure plasmex. Their drones are disposable, they don't fear guns or ships and even the Xith'cal don't raid them. They've had nothing to fear in the whole of their history, so why are they so afraid now? What are the Xith'cal doing?"

Brenton

Rachel Bach 

Fortune's Pawn p. 294-295

"Xith'cal are brilliant bioengineers."

Brenton

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 295

"They've changed their own race countless times over the centuries, increasing their senses by a factor of ten, making themselves immune to every disease and specializing the genders so intensely that male and female Xith'cal are almost separate species. Controlled evolution, their females call it, but Stoneclaw is a tricky old girl. Her tribe focuses on biological weapons. I think Stoneclaw was building something on the ship. Something that could threaten even a Velgis hive mind."

Brenton

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 295

"Trauma shells surround you body in a field that slows your body down to nothing. That might not sound so bad, but the reality is that you feel like your constantly on the edge of suffocating. Plus, they're dark. Being in one made me think of being buried alive, though I usually had drugs to get me through."

Rachel Bach

Fortune's Pawn p. 311

Rupert took Devis memories to save both her life and the crew.

Rupert put her in a trauma shell.

When Hyrek released her she saw Rupert talking with Caldwell and felt anger and pain but didn't know why.