Book Beginnings and Friday 56: The Memory of Fire (The Waking Land #2) by Callie Bates || Favorite/Least Favorite Short Story

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

Please join us over at RoseCityReader every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Synopsis:

     Thanks to the magic of Elanna Valtai and the Paladisan noble Jahan Korakides, the lands once controlled by the empire of Paladis have won their independence. But as Elanna exhausts her powers restoring the ravaged land, news that the emperor is readying an invasion spurs Jahan on a desperate mission to establish peace.
     Going back to Paladis proves to be anything but peaceful. As magic is a crime in the empire, punishable by death, Jahan must hide his abilities. Nonetheless, the grand inquisitor’s hunters suspect him of sorcery, and mysterious, urgent messages from the witch who secretly trained Jahan only increase his danger of being exposed. Worst of all, the crown prince has turned his back on Jahan, robbing him of the royal protection he once enjoyed.
     As word of Jahan’s return spreads, long-sheathed knives, sharp and deadly, are drawn again. And when Elanna, stripped of her magic, is brought to the capital in chains, Jahan must face down the traumas of his past to defeat the shadowy enemies threatening his true love’s life, and the future of the revolution itself.

Book Beginning:
Most of my childhood is torn into pieces, memories scraped together, guessing at the whole. But I remember waking up that afternoon, ten years old, on the stone table in Madiya's cave. I don't know why she never took the memory from me. Maybe, in the chaos, it was an accident. An omission.

My 56:
"Is this what you always did?" he says, and with a gasp. "It is. You made the commander look the other way. Everyone. You did it everyone -to my father..."

*     *     *     *     *

50/50 Friday is a new weekly link-up hosted by Carrie @ The Butterfly Reader and Laura @ Blue Eye Books.  Every week they have a new topic featuring two sides of the same coin - you share a book that suits each category and link up on the hosts' blogs.

The cover for Witch of Duva is linked to the actual short story on Tor(dot)com. I believe it was posted there by Bardugo herself.
And the cover for Little Android is linked to the story on Wattpad. I didn't write reviews for either story. I did like The Little Andriod, just not as much as the other short stories in the Lunar Chronicles.

Favorite

Meh