Willa
Bresher wants her life to matter. Her home is Haven, a network of villages clinging
to civilization three centuries after a plague devastated Earth's population.
But Haven feels too small for the big dreams of a confident and restless young
woman like Willa.
She
bolts from the threat of marriage for an apprenticeship with an arcane guild of
mind-linked stewards, who guide the flow of goods and information between
villages. Her mentor is a visionary leader with a radical plan for Haven's
future. Willa needs to prove she's as smart and daring as any man in order to
secure a place in that future.
When
she encounters an intriguing outsider named Akenam in the ruins of an ancient
city, Willa's path begins to veer off course. Space-dwelling humans have
returned to resettle the planet, and their intentions toward the aboriginal
Terrans are unclear. Willa follows
Akenam to a distant island to join five other envoys at a summit meeting to
determine the future courses of all their civilizations.
There
she clashes with the summit leader, a 370-year-old scientist with a grudge
against Haven. Akenam has been assigned as her aide, but she doubts his loyalty and
resists his friendship. Back home, Willa's former mentor is determined to make
himself Haven's first king. And a message from her long-dead mother may be the
key to unlocking a centuries-old conspiracy that threatens her people.
Willa
never meant for her life to matter this
much.
I can really see it shaping up. Isn't Query Shark awesome? If this is really meant as a pitch (ie not like a back cover blurb), you might want to focus on one big choice she needs to make. I'm not sure how early in the story she leaves her village/goes to the summit, but I think more of a focus on one question--what will she do? what's at stake?--is a better tease, even if it's not an accurate representation of how the plot of the book is spread out. This is what I've taken away from QS, anyway.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know I need to get through the set-up more quickly. She meets Akenam in scene 2, but doesn't leave for the summit until the end of Act I.
ReplyDeleteI want to leave out the Bridgers (mind-linked stewards blah blah) altogether... but one of the OTHER thing QS harps on is making sure the antagonist makes it into the query. And since I have two, from different places, who Willa meets at different times, I'm a bit muddled how to make it all hang together without being so linear.