Thursday, July 26, 2012

July Anything #6

TITLE: Rebel Threads
GENRE: Young Adult Fantasy Query Letter

Seventeen-year-old Adalmund Port lives in a world where magic is woven
and knotted like thread by those who have the eyes to see it. She’s
one of the last in the world who can manipulate these strings.

Adalmund can whistle fire into her hands, vanish with a twist of her
finger, and she’s the perfect weapon because of it. After the
assassination of her nation’s heir, the queen orders Adalmund to
infiltrate a neighboring country and murder the man behind the attack.
But weaving magic takes two hands. Due to a grave wound Adalmund
sustained in the attack, she will never use her right arm again.

Adalmund will not let herself fail her queen, though, and hides her
injury long enough to teleport across the border.

Instead of one murderer, Adalmund finds an army poised to attack her
nation within the week. It would start a war her country couldn’t win,
and Adalmund can’t defeat them on her own since she’s still struggling
to weave magic with only one hand. She swallows her pride and turns to
the mysterious revolutionary, Peace, for help.

A charismatic and violent man able to weave the threads of magic like
Adalmund, Peace is planning a coup against the army threatening her
nation. If she helps his rebellion, he’ll make sure there’s no army
left to attack her country.

To stop a war, she’ll have to start a revolution.

REBEL THREADS is a young adult fantasy of 70,000 words. It is a
standalone book with series potential.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

3 comments:

  1. I like your story! The title is cool.

    My only remarks are that your query reads a bit too "factual", meaning it doesn't exactly grab me. It tells the plot well, but when I finished reading it, I had to go back and read it again because some of the information just didn't stick. I was also a little confused toward the end by Peace. I thought at first read Peace was a group of people, but it's only one person.

    Query letters are no fun. You have a good start here, it just needs to be more gripping.

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  2. Carmen made a great observation... this query needs a strong voice, one that echoes the voice in your story. I think once you write it with voice in mind that it'll read much better.

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  3. Although this reads like a very intriging adventure, the first two critiquers are right, it needs voice.

    One simple way to add voice is to show her emotions through thoughts or bits of dialogue. Or internal monalogue.

    Example: "Seventeen-year-old Adalmund Port lives in a world where magic is woven and knotted like thread by those who have the eyes to see it. She’s one of the last in the world who can manipulate these strings."
    (But Adalmund has no desire to risk the consequences.)

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