Hello there!
I've just gotten a request from an agent for a partial (50 pages) of my fantasy novel. Would anyone be able to take a glance over this weekend? I want to know if my book lives up to what I promise in the query, which I'm including below. I've revised in numerous times, and so hopefully, it is what they want to see!
Genre: Young-adult fantasy. Here's the query
The Devouring Winter is a completed 130,000 word environmental fantasy novel aimed at the adult and young adult market. For thousands of years, the four elements have slept peacefully under the watchful eye ofthe Terakhein, environmental guardians who balance nature to keep all in harmony. However, the Terakhein have mysteriously disappeared, and now earth, water, fire, and air are awake and walking among us. The oldest air spirit has created a deadly winter to spread over all the land, and the earth spirits—who look intoxicatingly beautiful and change into serpents—slowly feed off the humans who are freezing to death. To complicate matters, the Nemarons, an over-industrialized nation, seems to have had something to do with the disappearance of the Terakhein and the creation of the winter. And now they are out to conquer their neighboring countries.
The world is on a path to utter chaos and destruction, yet a young man named Jonathan has nightmares about a beautiful earth spirit who is hunting a little girl in the wilderness. Cadman, the village smith, believes that the girl Jonathan dreams about might a lost, perhaps even the last, Terakhein and that to find her is the only way to stop the winter as well as the Nemarons. Jonathan and Cadman begin a relentless search in the northern wild for any Terakhein they can find, aided by a feisty widow (think Ripley in Aliens meets Chaucer's Wife of Bath) and another trader who has a mysterious reason for helping them. Their every move is tracked by earth and air, and a warrior people who are the best of hunters; time is short, and how can they outrun the very elements? But the spirits of water and fire have decided to join in the fight too—on Jonathan’s side. Among them is Bryn, a terrible spirit of fire in spider form and Morgan, the most beautiful—and deadly—of water spirits, for she comes from deep inside the ocean's abyss.
The Devouring Winter is the first novel in a trilogy and is unique in the fantasy tradition since there are no cliché magic swords, elves, dragons, and no special runes to decipher. Rather, the novel introduces an environmental ethic into the fantasy tradition—i.e., it is our connection to the earth's elements that gives us power, not our appropriation of its resources. I have a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from (I give publication info and such).
Let me know if you'd have the time to look at it!!! Thanks
Nancy
I've just gotten a request from an agent for a partial (50 pages) of my fantasy novel. Would anyone be able to take a glance over this weekend? I want to know if my book lives up to what I promise in the query, which I'm including below. I've revised in numerous times, and so hopefully, it is what they want to see!
Genre: Young-adult fantasy. Here's the query
The Devouring Winter is a completed 130,000 word environmental fantasy novel aimed at the adult and young adult market. For thousands of years, the four elements have slept peacefully under the watchful eye ofthe Terakhein, environmental guardians who balance nature to keep all in harmony. However, the Terakhein have mysteriously disappeared, and now earth, water, fire, and air are awake and walking among us. The oldest air spirit has created a deadly winter to spread over all the land, and the earth spirits—who look intoxicatingly beautiful and change into serpents—slowly feed off the humans who are freezing to death. To complicate matters, the Nemarons, an over-industrialized nation, seems to have had something to do with the disappearance of the Terakhein and the creation of the winter. And now they are out to conquer their neighboring countries.
The world is on a path to utter chaos and destruction, yet a young man named Jonathan has nightmares about a beautiful earth spirit who is hunting a little girl in the wilderness. Cadman, the village smith, believes that the girl Jonathan dreams about might a lost, perhaps even the last, Terakhein and that to find her is the only way to stop the winter as well as the Nemarons. Jonathan and Cadman begin a relentless search in the northern wild for any Terakhein they can find, aided by a feisty widow (think Ripley in Aliens meets Chaucer's Wife of Bath) and another trader who has a mysterious reason for helping them. Their every move is tracked by earth and air, and a warrior people who are the best of hunters; time is short, and how can they outrun the very elements? But the spirits of water and fire have decided to join in the fight too—on Jonathan’s side. Among them is Bryn, a terrible spirit of fire in spider form and Morgan, the most beautiful—and deadly—of water spirits, for she comes from deep inside the ocean's abyss.
The Devouring Winter is the first novel in a trilogy and is unique in the fantasy tradition since there are no cliché magic swords, elves, dragons, and no special runes to decipher. Rather, the novel introduces an environmental ethic into the fantasy tradition—i.e., it is our connection to the earth's elements that gives us power, not our appropriation of its resources. I have a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from (I give publication info and such).
Let me know if you'd have the time to look at it!!! Thanks
Nancy