[Pathir]

What is the best opening line in a fantasy book you've read?
One of mine is in the first part of Otherland by Tad Williams, City of Golden Shadow, where Paul Jonas is trapped in the virtual trenches of WW I.
'It started in mud, as many things do.'
Isn't it brilliant? Makes you wanna read the rest of the story rightaway.
Curious what you all think.

[azaz]

Bang your dead.

NOt, just kidding. I don't know, I'll have to check all my books for the first line and then decide as its almost impossible for me to remember the first line to any story, unless its one I read recently. But I can't be bothered to do that.

So I'll make one of my own phrases:
'Dead men don't die'

[cassandra]

My husband regularly quotes the first line of one of King's Gunslinger novels:

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."

[Rob B]

Ah, ya beat me to it Cassandra!

[Shehzad]

That makes two of us...

[FitzChivalry]

Well, i don't really remember, but i like Feist's style of starting every chapter with a sentence, dot. Going down a line and the chapter begins... if you know what i mean.
Another good line that i remember is from sci fi, Endymion by Dan Simmons.
"You are reading this for the wrong reason"

[Cellandros]

I've always loved Feist's short sentence starters at the begining of each chapter as well.

[BehemothCat]

Here's a few that you probably haven't run into:

"Beerlight was a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism."
Steve Aylett - Slaughtermatic (SF)

"It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, saying: In the old days lived a pawnbroker named Jurgen; but what his wife called him was very much worse than that."
James Branch Cabell - Jurgen

"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundle Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker (SF - the entire book is written like this)

"In eighteenth century France lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages."
Patrick Süskind - Perfume

"It was ordained that Shibli Bagarag, nephew to the renowned Baba Mustapha, chief barber to the court of Persia, should shave Shagpat, the son of Shimpoor, the son of Shoolpi, the son of Shullum; and they had been clothiers for generations, even to the time of Shagpat, the illustrious.
George Meredith - The Shaving of Shagpat

Daniel Singleton was polishing the bar when a robot wearing only scanty satin underwear came in and demanded a pig's trotter."
Eugene Byrne - ThiGMOO (SF)

Cheers

[Xerodegrees]

How about "Call me Ishmael?"

[Charles]

I don't remember how it started out, but I was captured from the very first sentence in Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I don't know if it was just the language or what, but I couldn't put that book down after I started it.