Johne Cook says:

F, none of the above.

I admit, it’s hard to write a compelling hook. I don’t always go for the dramatic hook. Sometimes, the cerebral hook carries more weight.

This is one of my favorite novel openings, not because of its ‘hit you in the face’ pizzazz, but because of its deceptive way of sneaking up on you.

The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one today and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, its efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.
   In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.
   Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen. It was literally motionless, I could see the hand very clearly. The light in the radio cabin was very dim, the rheostat of the angled table lamp had been turned down until only a faint pool of yellow fell on the scratched metal of the table, cutting the arm off at the cuff, but the hand was very clear. Rock-steady, the gun could have no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. Beyond the pool of light I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the bulkhead, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat. My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Colt hadn’t varied by a fraction of a degree. Unconsciously, almost, I braced my right leg to meet the impending shock. Defensively, this was a very good move, about as useful as holding up a sheet of newspaper in front of me. I wished to God that Colonel Sam Colt had gone in for inventing something else, something useful, like safety-pins.

Alastair MacLean, When Eight Bells Toll. And he wrote like that for the rest of the novel, using the First Person POV to masterfully hide and reveal just what the story needed to stay compelling.  I bet he had a brilliant poker face.  😉

Krysti says:

I write–or have written–a number of books, none of which are published. But I was a reader first, and I’ve tried, since I’ve had to take an enforced hiatus from writing, to rediscover what it was that made me enjoy a book so much in the first place. So…I’m looking at these submissions from a reader’s point of view more than a writer’s:
A: I actually liked the first sentence, and would have liked a more descriptive or related followup that went somewhere interesting.
The argument was a jarring non-sequitur, and I have to be honest: if a book starts with an argument, I’m not reading it. I don’t care about who’s doing the arguing or why, and I am not engaged on either side, nor do I want to be.
If you put an argument further into the story after you’ve made me care and take sides, then I’ll read it and even root for one character over the other or fuss at them both for being eejits. But you’ve GOT to make me care!
B: I would probably keep reading at least a little further on B in horrified fascination, and not because I get interested in books containing assassins who kill little boys. If he kills the boy, I’m with the commenter who said she’d throw the book against the wall! But I did vote for this excerpt. Provisionally.
C: I would definitely continue reading C, though as someone else (Kaci?) previously noted, tourneys have been done before, and there is always that type of friction. It’s very predictable.
However, if the storyline went somewhere more interesting or intense in the next 1000 words or so, it’s probably my kind of book. I’m not opposed to reading story-lines that contain familiar elements. I can even enjoy and approve that familiarity about them; that sense of knowing just where this is going and wondering what novel way the author is going to use to rescue her good guy at the end. But I really don’t care if she uses a tried and true method either! So long as there are enough novel, interesting elements thrown in along the way, and the story is concrete and well told, and the characters are 3D, I will read it to the end.
I would point out that stories containing many predictable elements are, and have always been very popular with a large segment of the population (mostly female). I believe we call these books romance paperbacks!
In the field of science fiction, Anne McCaffrey capitalizes very well on writing books with completely predictable story-lines that tell you in advance  exactly where her story is going next. No surprises. Ever! Lots of people buy and love her books. I’ve gotten to the point where the total obviousness annoys me and I refuse to read anything ever again about unicorns.
D: D is a bit disjointed, but it’s interesting in its disjointedness, like there’s a story here the character isn’t too sure of, herself.
(I’m assuming it’s a her, since I’m a female reading it, and there aren’t any clues either way. This is a flaw that I as a reader would appreciate having fixed so I can KNOW and sink deeper into enjoying the story).
But I voted for it, because it does capture my attention and I would definitely read more. D has the potential to turn into a really great story.
One further point: That whole thing with the stave? I didn’t see it at first, then I saw the comments about it, and wondered, so I went back and re-read it, and THEN it confused me. A short phrase (speaking now as a writer who does do critiques for other writers) that explains clearly why she’s running the stave over the ground, would keep me in the story and also make it harder for someone (like me) whose eyes want to skip sentences that lack continuity–to ignore it so completely.
And yeah, my feet are blind in shoes too. It’s an artifact of growing up barefoot in the tropics. So I really identified with that–or at least what I’m assuming was meant by that.
E: E wasn’t what I’m looking for in a book. Dead meadows full of old bones with nothing going to happen now–usually aren’t. It has be pretty powerful writing to get me to read about an old abandoned battlefield that doesn’t even have grass growing in it. I do like that passage in Ezekiel, maybe because something DOES happen.
The guy in the meadow searching for something–well, if I knew what he was searching for, even if it was drunk old Aunt Sally’s left boot that she somehow lost half-way home from the bar last night, I’d be more interested. Especially if she lurches out onto the front porch in the distance and begins haranguing him in a humorous way for not being fast enough in returning her footwear to her–Not that I particularly like books about old drunks!
If it was something really intriguing, like a clue that might help to solve a murder, even if it is only drunk Aunt Sally’s left boot, but especially if Aunt Sally’s boot is somehow suspected of being the murder weapon or is the murder weapon, I’d absolutely engage with the story. I love murder mysteries!
So, in conclusion:
When I have enough (rare) time to pick up a book, it’s for relaxation and disengaging my brain’s higher critical functions. As long as the story allows me to do that and doesn’t throw anything horribly obvious at me that forces me out of the story or stuff that makes me have to think about what the author was trying to say and whether or not I need to agree or disagree with it in some way or outright dislike it; I’ll read it AND enjoy it. 
Superior books that leave me saying “Oh, yeah! This is a KEEPER” are extremely hard to find. Since I’m a reader first; if I can’t find a good book to read, I become an extremely FRUSTRATED reader!
I can’t just hold out for the superior books. I’d live in a state of constant frustration!
Books like some of these seem to be turning into, if they’re “good enough,” then I’m content.