Caledonia Lass's Current Query Critiqued

It's Friday. I'm exhausted. It's raining. Let's get to work.

Remember, Caledonia's query will be in plain text, my feedback will be in red.

Here we go:

Dear Ms. X,

I am pleased to submit for your consideration my fantasy adventure novel, Adversarius, Shadow Of The Rose: Book One, complete at 61,921 words. Book two, Veritas is nearing completion and book three, Bellum is in rough draft form.

Okay. So what we have here is what I call housekeeping. I suggest saving this for the end of the query letter, and getting right into what truly matters first: your story. That being said, there are agents who prefer this stuff up front, so let's roll with it.

My next point is that the title of an unpublished work needs to be in all caps in a query letter, like this: ADVERSARIUS, SHADOW OF THE ROSE: BOOK ONE. You also would not normally need to focus on series potential, because when it comes to landing an agent, the first book must stand on its own, but considering the heavy genre nature of this novel, and the giveaway in the title, I don't think it's a big problem in this particular query. If you do mention the other two, make sure to put commas after the titles, like when you mention someone's proper name.

Finally, you don't give exact word counts like this. I would say this book is about 60,000 words, but that's actually really short for fantasy, so you might want to say about 62,000. You don't need to give the exact count, because that's going to change by the time you get to publication anyway.

Oh, and one last thing, you can leave the "adventure" part out of the genre. Fantasy is essentially always adventuresome by nature.

The two kingdoms of Paridzule and Relavia have been battling since before recorded history. Relavia's motivation for war? Power. Paridzule has fought valiantly to maintain their borders and have built a formidable navy, but so far all of their efforts have just kept Relavia contained.

Hmm. So normally you want to start out with a character, but I think with this kind of book, in which the setting (hopefully) almost becomes a character of its own, starting with a bit of world building might be fine. The only problem here is, we need more world building.

You've got some cool names for these countries, which is a good start, but other than that there's nothing hooky about this. We need more clues as to what kind of world this is. Is it pure fantasy? Are there monsters? Is there magic? Is this navy just regular old clipper ships? The way you have it worded now is kind of dry.

In a desperate bid to put an end to the conflicts once and for all, Kayta Ni'adzul's father decides to arrange a marriage between his eldest daughter, Senweis, and the sole heir of Relavia, Alabassin. But Alabassin quickly discovers he doesn't want Senweis; he wants Kayta instead. Alabassin's father refuses to allow a union between the two kingdoms and launches an attack that would let him take over Paridzule with very little resistance. A ship Kayta and her brother are traveling on is attacked by pyrates. She's thrown overboard and left for dead but an unlikely rescuer comes to her aid.

All right. So you've got more great character names here. Seriously, you're great at naming things, but this is a bit if a jumble. I'm confused as to how this all works. If these countries are at war, how is the prince discovering anything about which princess he wants? Are they exchanging letters? Have they met? If his dad won't allow the whole thing, I can't understand how they meet.

Next, when it comes to this attack, you need to get specific. What does he do? How will it allow him to take over the country so easily? Is it an assassination attempt on Katya's father?

I like this part about the pyrates, especially the way you spell pyrates, but it's very sudden and does not follow logically what you were describing right before it. As a reader I go from the vague description of the attack, to suddenly we're on a ship, and there are pyrates. It makes me go: huh?

With no memory of who she is, Kayta suddenly faces strange places and meets new people. Some of them are legendary, others are downright deadly. Now it is a race to see who will arrive in Paridzule first, Kayta or Relavia's armies. But if Kayta can't recall who she is, how can she fight for a home she doesn't remember?

This is all incredibly vague too, but as a final summary it kind of works. I would maybe just cut the line about legendary versus deadly.

Although I have yet to be published, I love books that center around a large world and introduce some of the same characters over again or even just mention a beloved character's name as a history reference. Adversarius is the beginning of such stories. I've also been blogging for over a year and have an internet presence on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and AbsoluteWrite.

I would cut this whole paragraph. If you don't have any publishing credits, that's fine, you can just skip it. None of this other stuff matters, except for maybe your blog. You could just say something like: "I blog about writing, musings, and other nonsense at http://caledonialass.blogspot.com/"

With heavy emphasis on world-building and strong, memorable characters, Adversarius, Shadow Of The Rose: Book One will appeal to readers who enjoy such works as Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Lord of the Rings.

First of all, before I critique this part, I just want to say I effing love this comparison. Those are three of my favorite worlds/franchises, so I'm definitely hooked. However, I think you can present this better. For one thing, you've named one world, and two series of novels. I think you should word it like this: "... will appeal to readers who enjoy worlds like Krynn, Middle-Earth, and the Forgotten Realms." You could also name the planet that Paridzule and  Relavia exist on, thus making the comparison parallel. Your other option would be to name one of the most famous Forgotten Realms books, like Baldur's Gate, Drizzt, Elminster, or The Knights of Myth Drannor.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this proposal, I look forward to hearing from you.

Okay. So I think your main problem is that we have a lack of understanding about how things happen in your story. I've got a relatively decent sense of the plot, but it kind of jumps around, and I'm not clear on how one thing leads into another. Your biggest strength is your awesome names, which gives your world a strong sense of culture, but I would like to see just a touch more world building. Is there magic, how does the navy work, and are there dragons, trolls, elves or anything like that.

You've obviously got a cool story here, and I think you've actually got room for a bit more information in this query.

So that's it.

What do you guys think? Can you suggest anything else? What other important information would you like to see?

Please leave your feedback in the comments, and thanks for reading!