THE FIRST 22: Historical Fantasy

[geogstacey]

Sixteen-year-old Derek thought the biggest challenges in life were on a football field. Now, he's learning there are even greater challenges to face—after death, when he becomes a reaper.
Derek joins the magical world of reapers where he travels between the earthly realm, the reaper realm and the underworld delivering souls from this life to the next. To receive his reaper’s pin, the mark of a graduated reaper he has to pass the final test, ferry the souls to the underworld and deliver them to the gates of heaven and hell.
Everything goes wrong when two rogue reapers hijack Derek’s shipment of souls and heaven’s gatekeeper threatens war against the reaper world if the souls aren’t returned, and quickly. Derek travels to the underworld and takes on flesh-eating giants, psychotic merpeople and amnesia inducing rivers to find the culprits responsible and deliver the souls back to heaven before all hell breaks loose.
Complete at 50,000 words, THE FIRST 22 is historical fantasy based on the first 22 days of a reapers life. I am a member of SCBWI and a contributing author to the blog Our Pages Aren’t Numbered.

Thank you for your time.

[Amanda Elizabeth]

It sounds like a really interesting story! I don't want to make specific suggestions to format because I'm horrible with punctuation, but I think there are some errors. I think cleaning that aspect up will make it flow better.

[Animad345]

Sixteen-year-old Derek thought the biggest challenges in life were on a football field. Now, he's learning there are even greater challenges to face—after death, when he becomes a reaper. I really like the first sentence but this is far too ambiguous. How did he die? If he was an old man then it would make sense, but there needs to be an explicit reason for why he has died at such a young age.
Derek joins the magical world of reapers where he travels between the earthly realm, the reaper realm and the underworld delivering souls from this life to the next. To receive his reaper’s pin, the mark of a graduated reaper he has to pass the final test, ferry the souls to the underworld and deliver them to the gates of heaven and hell.
Everything goes wrong when two rogue reapers hijack Derek’s shipment of souls and heaven’s gatekeeper threatens war against the reaper world if the souls aren’t returned, and quickly. Derek travels to the underworld and takes on flesh-eating giants, psychotic merpeople and amnesia inducing rivers to find the culprits responsible and deliver the souls back to heaven before all hell breaks loose. I love that last bit. However, this part seems a bit too wordy. The reaper's pin is unnecessary in the query unless it becomes a major plotpoint later. All we need to know is that he has to pass a final test to become a graduated reaper.
Complete at 50,000 words, THE FIRST 22 is historical fantasy based on the first 22 days of a reapers life. I am a member of SCBWI and a contributing author to the blog Our Pages Aren’t Numbered. I can't give you much help on the bio but I'm sure others on this forum will.

Thank you for your time.

On the whole, I love this concept, but this query can be made even better. I hope that I helped.

[Bobcgirl8]

Sixteen-year-old Derek thought the biggest challenges in life were on a football field. Now, he's learning there are even greater challenges to face—after death, when he becomes a reaper.

I agree that I want to know how he dies here and I think instead of saying "magical world," which makes me think of Harry Potter, you should draw in some of the creep factor and humor of death (slimy, bone-clattering, Elvis-lacking world).

"deliver them to the gates of heaven and hell." Who is waiting to recieve the souls? Are they dead teenagers as wellie more traditional demons and angels?

I like the premise of this book and wish you luck. Hope I could help.

Sincerely,

Bobcgirl8

[clegler]

This story sounds really interesting and original. Reading the query, though, I kind of got the feeling that there would be some humorous elements to the plot...I don't know if its because the voice in which the query was written is very laid back (which I like!) or if that was intentional...either way, it was something I noticed.

I think the only thing I was interested in knowing a little bit more about was HOW the character died and got to the point of being a reaper. My suggestion would be to maybe add a quick line about how that happened?

Other than that...I like the story idea! I hope to read it in the future.

[winterone]

I agree with the feedback by the rest of the posters here. But I also have an additional question - why "Historical" fantasy?