[QCrit]: ELDERBERRY, FANTASY, ADULT, 100K, ATTEMPT #1
Hi everyone!
Would appreciate some feedback on my query letter. I am unsure about the 3rd paragraph and have two different options: The second one reveals the midpoint twist and is very specific (I'm not sure if this is too much info though?). Would love some fresh and objective eyes on this. :)
Dear [Agent],
Due to your interest in [personalisation], I would like to present ELDERBERRY, in which a herbalist is uprooted from her solitary life to heal a king, only to find he wants her help to die instead. It presents a dedicated female herbalist who stands alone in the world, similar to HEMLOCK & SILVER, with the atmospheric voice and character driven writing of THE KNIGHT AND THE MOTH. It is an adult fantasy novel with a slow burn romantic subplot. With trilogy potential, it is complete at 100,000 words.
Maiden and Mother, one path or the other.
In the Temple of the Mother, girls grow to find their divine path. Where her sisters are pious and silver-eyed, Aeliana is unkempt and her eyes burn gold. Aeliana yearns to run in woods and follow the Maiden’s path. But her failed ceremony leaves her pathless and apart, working as a servant for the sisters she once grew with. By day, in secret, Aeliana becomes skilled in herb-lore. By night, she is servile to the Temple and the scathing eye of its Mother Priestess.
When a dangerous encounter with a noble leads Aeliana to use her herb-skill to kill, she flees the Temple. All who knew her believe her dead. She starts anew as a herbalist in a dwindling port town. For a time, content. Until a man arrives seeking aid for his master and Aeliana is uprooted from her solitary life, appointed herbalist to the ailing Oak King. Failing to save the King will cost her life. Only the King doesn’t want her to heal him, but to help him die.
3.
Ease him to death, keep his condition from his watchful heirs, and she can return home. To quiet, to peace. But the King is keeping secrets from more than just his children. Secrets that will send Aeliana on an impossible journey with his son, the thunderous, mistrusting heir who blames her for his father’s decline. Aeliana will be made to reckon with her past and her differences, for if they do not succeed, she will not have a home to return to.
OR
Ease him to death, keep his condition from his watchful heirs, and she can return home. But upon his deathbed, the King presents a deadly truth and new task: the Oak that protects the kingdom is dying. Without the Oak, blighted creatures will overrun the country. The cure, a fabled flower Aeliana knows is not real, but the King believed she could find. Forced to journey with the heir who blames her for his father’s death, Aeliana will be made to reckon with her past. Her failings, once the cost of her home, may be the thing to save this one.
[Bio]
[Sign off]