My feedback will be in red.
Here we go:
Don’t be careful what you wish for--let the Tenders do that!
I get what you're trying to do here, but I don't think you need this. It is kind of a clever line, but it has very little meaning to a reader at the beginning like this, and even later, when we understand what it means, it's unlikely someone would come back to it.
On the other hand, it's awesome to see you know how to represent an em-dash in a query letter. As much as I love the em-dash, it does not play well with others; others being the hundreds of potential email clients an agent might be using, which may or may not work well with rich text and advanced formatting. If you want an em-dash in your query, readers, do it like this, with two hyphens/normal dashes.
In the year 2018, the North is ruled by wish-granting humans called Tenders. This is a much better hook. It's got world building, voice, and a great potential for conflict, all in a few succinct words. Seventeen-year-old Ibsen I agree with other readers that this is an awesome name. If anyone doesn't know the playwright Henrik Ibsen, go look him up, he had one of the coolest beards ever known to man. Goodman lives in the South, a segregated country where faith is the priority and Tenders are abominations before God. I like this concept, and I think the idea makes for an excellent punch at the end of your opening paragraph, but I'm not sure the execution is as good as it could be. For example "faith is the priority" sounds a bit weak to me. If Tenders are abominations (awesome wording there, BTW) then I think you can use stronger language in the phrase that precedes it. I haven't read this novel, so I'm not sure what to suggest, but I'm sure you can come up with something more vivid. Also, segregated how? What are the cultural groups that are being separated and/or oppressed?
Ibsen struggles to care for his schizophrenic mother love this while his sister Abigail works can you be more specific? What does she do? Farm, hunt, steal, or have a normal type job? to keep food on the table. She’s the only one to reassure him that their mother’s illness won’t infect him, does Ibsen not know that mental illness is not contagious, or is that not true in the world of TENDER? until she you may want to change this pronoun or the one at the beginning of the sentence. It's not hard to puzzle out what you mean, but it's not immediately clear whether the mother or the sister disappears. disappears and leaves Ibsen to tend to his mother alone.
Abigail's trail leads to the land of the Tenders, making her a traitor in the eyes of the South. In the eyes of the culture of the South, or in the eyes of some kind of institution that is in power? I think you need to be a bit clearer about who the enemy is here. No one ventures across the border and returns, but Ibsen will lose his mother, home, and sanity you could just say "everything." if he doesn’t get his sister back. His only guide is a girl who might be lying to him more than helping. She knows her way around the North, and she knows even more about the Tenders – (em-dash, use a double hyphen here too) because she is one.This is awesome, but I want to know a little more about how he found this guide. Does Ibsen head out on foot, leaving his mother behind, and then just randomly run into this girl on the trail? Or did he know her already or something?
As far as her being a surprise Tender, that's just great. Rarely does a twist work that well in a query, without having to over-explain it.
To find Abigail and survive the North, Ibsen must deal with the demons he's been raised to fear. This is the Tenders, right? In their world, he gets more than his sister – (em-dash) far more than he wished for.
Okay. So this query is describing what is obviously an exciting premise for a story. I love the feel of the Civil War remix, and the idea that this near future America is not quite what it seems, but you're lacking some specificity here. I mean I sense that the conflict is Ibsen looking for his sister, with the help of his Tender friend (pun intended) and then worrying about being persecuted by ... someone. My biggest problem is that we have no idea who would be after him, or what they might do to him.
Are we talking about some kind of neo-racist xenophobes who are so terrified of the Tender's powers that they murder them on site? Or is there some kind of government in place that has laws against associating with them? It wouldn't take much, probably just a sentence or two, but if you could set up who the enemy is, the conflict and stakes in your story would make much more sense--and pack more punch.
TENDER is a young adult dystopian fantasy complete at 68,000 words.
So that's it.
What do you guys think? Did I miss anything? Get anything wrong? What would you like to see more (or less) of?
