Friday 56 and Book Beginning: The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez || Friday 50/50: Favorite/Least Favorite Comic Relief Character

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.

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.

(NetGalley ARC)

Synopsis:

  A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever in this captivating debut of connection across space and time.
"This is when your life begins."
  Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A boy, broken by his past.

  The scarred child does not speak, his only form of communication the beautiful and haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Captured by his songs and their strange, immediate connection, Nia decides to take the boy in. And over years of starlit travel, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself.

For both of them, a family.

  But Nia is not the only one who wants the boy. The past hungers for him, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.

Book Beginning:
He was born with an eleventh finger.

Friday 56:
While he rediscovered the notes to the song, the women and Sartoris put out the fold-out chairs, near enough to the edge of the landing pad that they could see out into the desert black, the Debby's floodlights on their backs.

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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.

This week's topic is a Favorite/Least Favorite comic Relief character. I had to think on this one a little, as I couldn't think of any right off the top of my head.

Favorite

Lee Jordan, Harry Potter.
As the hilarious commentator for Quidditch, and the Weasley twin's friend who loved jokes and pranks just as much as they did. Honestly, they got the casting perfect, but he was so underutilized in the movies, it was disgraceful.

Least
And I can't think of a least favorite. Characters whose only role is to be funny, who are also unfunny, are completely forgettable to me.