Sentence Sneak Peek - Down the Mysterly River

Down the Mysterly River by author Bill Willingham and Illustrator Mark Buckingham

The first sentence from each chapter of Down the Mysterly River, it's a mini summary of what you can expect to read.

* All first sentences are from an ARC I read provided by Tor|Forge Books

* Book will be released on September 13, 2011

* Spoilers are highlighted like this :)

"Max the Wolf was a wolf in exactly the same way that foothills are made up of real feet and a tiger shark is part tiger, which is to say, not at all."

"McTavish the Monster was on the run again."

"Before Max and Banderbrock had been asleep for very long, they were wakened by the sounds of barking and howling dogs not too far off in the distance."

"I never expected you to fight my battles for me," McTavish said, in the dying light of the campfire."

"Just before dawn, Lord Ander buried Cara-doc in a meadow higher up the same hill on which he'd lost the fight with Max the Wolf and his allies."

"This is not a good time to find ourselves trapped with our backs to a cliff," McTavish said."

"Walden the Bear was a black bear, even though, except for his nose, and possibly his eyes, he wasn't black."

"By midday the eight riders in Lord Robert's group had finished the treacherous over-land race east, from Cutters Keep to the high mountain road."

"Diana reached the bottom of the escarp-ment without mishap, though the rain made the rounded stone surface of the narrow ledge slick and deadly."

"First," Max said, when it was time to be-gin, "is this land the afterlife, as Bander-brock believes."

"From the bluff overlooking the secret grove, Diana looked through a small spyglass down on the company of fugitives talking—she sup-posed, since she couldn't hear them from so far away—to a particularly large aspen tree in the center of the grove."

"According to Prince Aspen, it wasn't more than an easy two-day hike through gently rolling woodlands from the location of his hidden grove to the road that led down into the Mysterly River valley."

"By the time the company had wakened to continue on their way, winding down the rudimentary forest trail to the roadway be-low them, Diana had already moved well ahead of them on the path."

"As much as a young boy is able to, Max prepared to meet his death as the hunting dogs hurled themselves down at them."

"The next day, early in the chilly morning, Max helped Paddy hook Incitatus up to the wagon, and they rolled off at a slow walking pace down the tail end of the mountain road, which meandered into the great Mys-terly River valley."

"Less than an hour after they were driven from the mountain road by the unwelcome appearance of the Eggman, forced away from their quarry and back into the trees of the Heroes Wood, the Cutters found Di-ana's bloodied and broken body among the large boul-ders at the bottom of the hill."

"When the female Cutter moved to intercept the boy and the animals making for the boat, the man in green prepared to help them against the woman."

"The day after McTavish left his friends on the riverbank, he found a large and sprawl-ing farm along the road south."

"To the unlikely question "How many Cutters are foolhardy enough to follow their prey into dangerous rapids?"

"Max hung in dark space, suspended be-tween a thousand intercanceling gravities."

"Max and Walden walked south for two days, remaining inside the narrow forest of giant redwoods that separated the river from the road that followed it."

"For a few minutes Max watched the Cutters ride away."

"Max looked at the pile of thin hardback books, spread out on a gian oaken table that had been polished to a mirror finish."

"Swift didn't call out, or pull a cord, or ring a bell, or do anything else to summon anyone that Max could discern, but a moment later Major appeared in the doorway of the wiz-ard's study."

"Max stood out on the south lawn, next to the large flat stone that seemed to grow up from the grass like a single tooth of some buried ogre."

Epilogue - "Walden the Bear never did learn how to be a detective or how to be the hero that arrives just in time."