A Great Way to Start a Book

I wouldn't say this is the best opening line I've ever read, but it's goddamned close.  From Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell:

Snow, tenderly caught by eddying breezes, swirled and spun in to and out of bright, lustrous shapes that gleamed against the emerald-blazoned black drape of sky and sparkled there for a moment, hanging, before settling gently on the soft, green-tufted plain with all the sickly sweetness of an over-written sentence.