There is now a revision posted here.
Where X-men meets Romeo and Juliet, EVOLUTION: DAUNTLESS HOPE is a completed 95,000-word YA urban fantasy set in the year 2112. Hope’s limitless power to control fire, water, earth, and air is the key in saving her species from extinction—a fact she didn’t know until her forbidden love for one human threatens her species’ last chance for survival.
Where X-men meets Romeo and Juliet, EVOLUTION: DAUNTLESS HOPE is a completed 95,000-word YA urban fantasy set in the year 2112. Hope’s limitless power to control fire, water, earth, and air is the key in saving her species from extinction—a fact she didn’t know until her forbidden love for one human threatens her species’ last chance for survival.
The night seventeen-year-old Hope sneaks into a LA night club, she didn’t expect to meet anyone who could leave her speechless—much less a mysterious and handsome human, who motivates her to break the number one rule—don’t fall in love with a human. But each time she risks her life to send Tristan letters, or cross the Altadena border to see him, she can forget her prophecy, which claims she’s the one who will somehow change the world for all super-humans (Unies), a burden she never wanted. For a time, she’s happy hiding behind the illusion that she’s a normal teen dealing with normal teen crap, and the world is at peace.
But she isn’t normal. The world is screwed up. And she can’t hide forever.
Unies are disappearing, deadly conflicts over land, property, and goods rage on. And everything becomes too real the night Hope finds an incoherent girl wandering a deserted street. A girl who looks too similar to Hope for it to be a coincidence. Everything she thought she knew, crumbles. All the secrets told to keep her safe, force her to see the harsh reality—LA’s most powerful leader, Kenric, is hunting for her, because he’s in her prophecy. He wants her dead before she kills him first. And worse, her own power could destroy her in the end. Now she must decide if she’ll face her fears, and the one man all Unies dread, becoming her species last beacon of hope. Or run away with Tristan, and save her life in the process.
Getting an Avatar: The Last Airbender feel. Split the opening apart. Hope's limitless should be a new paragraph. What makes her that different from a human, aside from the ability to control the elements. Ditch the "she isn't normal" in the 3rd paragraph.
ReplyDeleteEndless D, thanks for the feedback!
ReplyDeleteI got a little lost in this query the 1st time I read it. Personally, I didn't like the reference to X-men, since I didn't pick much of that up. By the sounds of it, to me, Hope is an alien species, rather than a genetically-advanced human.
ReplyDeleteYou might also be able to get away with not mentioning Kenric by name, since you don't want the query to get too character-soupy.
In terms of general plot, the concept sounds great; though, unless it's a vital part of the story, I suggest toning down the prophecy parts in the query - agents are getting quite sick of them.
Could you start with bringing in the setting - Altadena, or even two separated worlds/continents/tribes [edit: just looked this up after reading 'LA'. I thought the border was a made up place. Turns out having a Brit critique USA setting doesn't work all the time. :P] - and the Unies? I'm not a fan of having info delivered to me parentheses.
My favourite paragraph is your fourth. It brings in the most setting and tension/stakes. I'm curious for more info (in a don't-include-it-here way) about the girl who looks like Hope. :) Personally, I'd start with the beginning of p4 and then weave in p2 and the fact that Hope is being distracted from killing Kenric by breaking rule number one - falling for a human.
On that note, any way to get in more voice? I'd like to know exactly what Hope feels about the prophecy and the rules.
Also, watch out for a couple of times here past tense sneaks in. I don't see why the whole query can't be in present. Hope my thoughts help!
I really can't add to what Alexandrina said. I would definitely drop the X-men reference since I've read agents talk about never using a comic book comp for a novel. Other agents might feel differently, but why risk it?
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I agree with starting with the beginning of paragraph 4 and weaving in the second para. All it would take is some tightening for this to be really strong.
This story sounds really epic! I love fantasy. :)
ReplyDeleteI have two main suggestions:
One is to focus the query in on what makes this different from other YA fantasy novels. You have a lot of plot elements that agents will have seen many times before: a prophecy, a girl with powers, a forbidden romance with a human, etc. If you can focus on elements that agents will find unique and intriguing, and that will make it stand out from the rest, that'll probably make a big difference.
The other is to do a careful edit to keep sentence structures clear (and maybe simpler than they are now). There are a bunch of long sentences with lots of phrases hung together in ways where the relationship between them isn't necessarily intuitive.
A few other minor thoughts:
I agree that bringing in the voice of the novel would be great, if you can do it! (I'm terrible at getting voice into query letters, myself.)
I wouldn't say "limitless" power, because that sounds potentially a bit Mary Sue.
I agree that the girl who looks like Hope is a great twist to grab attention and complicate the story!
I'm not clear on what the threat to the world is, or on what the villain's deal is (what evil goals is he out to accomplish that make him such a problem? What motivates him?). If you can make the forces arrayed against the heroine clearer, it'll help clarify the stakes.
The line about conflicts over land, property, and goods sounded strangely dry and confused me. If there's some kind of war going on in the world that's part of the problems Hope is supposed to fix, it might be good to make that clear, and to let us really see what impact this has on Hope's world.
I also think it wouldn't hurt to try to tighten some of these sentences and wind up with a slightly shorter query in the next draft.
Good luck!
Good to know about the X-men reference! I haven't heard that before! See, the very reason seeking help is worth the time and effort! Working on the revision.
ReplyDeleteHey Monica,
ReplyDeleteYou know I love your story. Since you're working on a revision, I'll say up front what I've said in other crits. Send it to me when you're done and I'll post it with "Revised" in the title.
So - I like your first paragraph but don't like the words "a fact" for some reason. The fact she didn't know seems WAY more important than " a fact". It's kind of mind-blowing. If I found out I was the key to saving my species from extinction, that would fall more under "a giant revelation" or something. "Fact" seems so small. (nitpicky).
Second paragraph - you say every time she contacts/sees Tristan "she can forget her prophecy". Did you mean "she CAN'T forget her prophecy"?
"normal teen crap" is a hint at voice, if this is how your story actually reads. You might want to weave more of that flippant teen talk into the query. But having only this one spot with this kind of language is sort of jarring. I can't tell if that's your MFC's voice or if you - the author - just couldn't find a better choice of words. KWIM?
Also also - watch out that your first sentence has TWO em-dashes. Maybe change the second to a colon.
The last paragraph was way too much information to follow. I can tell there's a totally cool story here, but I don't understand what it is. There are a lot of vague asseertions and statements that have no rooted explanation. Maybe focus down on the points that really matter. Figure out who is the protag, who is the antag and what does the protagonist want.
Again - hit me up with a revision and I'll be glad to post it. You have a super cool sounding story. You can tighten this query up to make that really shine.
:)