When she awoke, the world was on fire.

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.

I like my first lines short and declarative. No complicated sentences. Of course, that's not really a Scott thing. It's pretty classic grab-the-reader technique.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.

So what are those balloons for? In case you fall off your hoverboard?' -- Tally to Peris

She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.

The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.