Query critique 5/9/24

[Nathan Bransford]

Want to see how your editing approach compares to mine?

Below is the query up for critique on the blog on Thursday. Feel free to chime in with comments, create your own redline (please note the "font colour" button above the posting box, which looks like a drop of ink), and otherwise offer feedback. When offering your feedback, please please remember to be polite and constructive. In order to leave a comment you will need to register an account in the Forums, which should be self-explanatory.

I'll be back with my own post on the blog and we'll literally be able to compare notes.

In CHILDREN OF SHADOWS, there is an ancient light power, left by Neolithic mystics, who foresaw the day alien shadow spirits would land on Earth. The shadows wipe out the majority of life, technology, erase memories and take all children as hosts.

(Personalized bit) So, I thought you’d enjoy my 112,000 word speculative novel.

When Christopher, fourteen, is gifted with light power, he knows he must use it to destroy the shadow spirits, but he is pushed down a hill by the girl who gave him the light. Christopher’s father awakes in his car from a dream of Christopher in the field, but he does not see his face. With no memory of life before the dead silence around him, the desire to find the one in his dreams and a potential family drives him on to find his son.

In order to save as many children as possible from an unknown fate, they must travel a post-apocalyptic South East England to the crater where the shadows landed. When they reach the alien pod, and Christopher confronts the girl who pushed him; she turns out to be his sister, who ran away from home the day the shadows came and found the light in an ancient cave before passing it onto him. After a dream battle, she sacrifices herself to destroy the pod. Christopher absorbs her memories from the time before the pod landed, but he also absorbs her shadow. Now he must advance on a longer quest across the country for a mystical cure to free himself of an increasing darkness inside, or let it take over and give in to its impulses.

A sequel to this novel and multiple spin-offs do exist in my mind, but it can stand alone; the book is in three parts which serve in a way like a trilogy of their own. Though the main character of the novel is a teenager, I believe it will appeal to both YA and adult audiences, similar to Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials universe. I’m a 21-year-old English author of 22 self-published books that I began when I was twelve. This novel is the first based in places I’ve lived or visited in England, places with meaning to me. I also write on Substack (https://harveyhamer.substack.com), chronicling my writing journey, weekly roundups, and serialising the start of this story as a novella.

Thank you for your time,

Harvey