[QCrit] Adult Fantasy - ARCHIVE OF SHADOWS (102K/Attempt 2)
Feedback on my first round was super helpful and much appreciated! It consisted mainly of showing character agency in the summary, clarifying the stakes, and removing dialogue tags from the first 300 (something I will be chasing through the whole manuscript).
I'm currently 7ish months into querying, with 3 full requests and 1 partial. Two have been rejected, two fulls still out but its been a long time so I'm assuming they are rejections too. I'd love to know if there's anything in this draft that's a red flag!
Dear [AGENT],
ARCHIVE OF SHADOWS is a sapphic dark academia fantasy with elements of horror and romance, following a young woman fighting the monster she is becoming at an elite academy for witches. Complete at 102,000 words, with duology and crossover potential, it blends the shadow magic of Holly Black's Book of Night with the vivid prose and gothic horror of Alexis Henderson's An Academy for Liars, and the enemies-to-lovers sapphic romance of Annie Summerlee's The Book of Blood and Roses.
Liren refuses to believe she’s haunted, ignoring the volatile shadows curling through her veins until they escape and murder her best friend. Found by a secretive Council of Witches, she’s dragged out of the life she’s known and given an ultimatum: serve time in prison for wielding dark magic, or attend Le Fay Academy to seek control before her shadows kill again.
Desperate to gain control, Liren chooses to attend Le Fay. But when she comes face-to-face with a malebrak—a spectral witch-hunting abomination—she learns her shadows will eat away at her humanity until she becomes one, twisting her body into the same undead monster that destroyed her life.
Fearing that every breath could be her last, Liren chases a cure through the academy’s archives with Thea, a bright half-witch and her only ally. But when their search reveals a dark conspiracy, Liren learns her deadly magic could be the key to saving other witches from a monstrous fate—or condemn them to it. The more she uses her magic, the quicker her shadows consume her. And when the malebraks threaten Thea, Liren faces losing another friend. Balanced on the razor-edge between life and death, she must decide: control her shadows and save herself, or wield them to save Thea—even if it means becoming the very monster she fears.
[BIO]
The full manuscript is available upon request. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.
[SIGN OFF]
First 300:
The shadows had teeth, and they hungered for blood.
They shouldn’t exist here, amongst the weathered sandstone of Durham University. They shouldn’t exist at all, outside the confines of Liren's mind. But she had long become accustomed to the thing that haunted her. The thing that coiled deep within the chambers of her heart, creeping through her veins, whispering to her when her guard was down.
After a lifetime of therapists, medications, and at the expense of her sanity, research into the paranormal, Liren had learned to ignored them. She ignored them now, as she strolled arm-in-arm with Sam on their way home from an end-of-exams party. She chose not to notice the shadows cast by the faculty buildings peeling away from their hosts, edging across the campus paths towards her. Inebriation hung over her like a thin veil, turning the glow of street lamps into a kaleidoscopic sky. She tipped her head back, bright dots of artificial light blurring with the dots of stars.
It was hard to see sentient shadows when you simply refused to look at them.
‘Do you think we’ll finally be accepted if we turn up to graduation hungover?’ Sam asked, grabbing one of the lamp posts and twirling around it.
The paths through campus were empty and Liren laughed, grabbing his hand. He pirouetted, stumbling over the curb.
‘Stop,’ she gasped, clutching her stomach. ‘I don’t want to throw up.’
Sam grinned. ‘We had, like, two drinks each.’
‘That’s two more than we usually have! And no, I think the acceptance train has long passed.’ Liren hooked an arm through his, glaring at a shadow that coiled around her ankle, a sharp icy nip at her exposed skin.
It was hard to ignore sentient shadows when they refused to leave you alone.