u/a3lium

Hi, everyone! I posted my first query letter for critique before I started writing the novel. I wrote the query ahead of time as an exercise in summarizing the concept. It helped me a lot with keeping the story focused while writing the actual pages. Do recommend. The novel is now almost ready to send to agents, so I figured it'd be smart to post the query here first for one more round of feedback. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read my query!

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Dear [Agent],

I’m seeking representation for SOL, a literary speculative novel with a thriller engine, complete at 80,000 words. Combining the oppressive system of Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers with the atmosphere of Callie Kazumi’s Greedy, SOL examines the personal cost of extreme social design and the moral consequences for those who thrive within it.

Deliberately sequestered on a breathtaking Mediterranean island funded by global elites, Sol is an invite-only utopia. Here, intelligence and talent are the most valuable currency. Brilliant yet unrecognized, often penniless, people from all over the world are adopted into established families. Sometimes they become children, sometimes parents, and sometimes they assume roles that defy generational logic. Each role is as hand-picked as the island’s beautiful mansions. Those born on the island, however, are quietly trying to escape.

After years of professional marginalization, Maro, a 33-year-old Croatian archeologist, receives the invitation. Without leaving the borders of his native country, he finds himself in a different world. What begins as an all-expenses-paid academic residency ends in signed adoption papers. With no tenure nor loved ones waiting for him at home, Maro puts his skepticism aside and becomes the adoptive father of a man significantly older than himself. His son Topher, ten years his senior, is a charming yet unproductive heir, blood-related to the island’s founder, known as Barba. Poaching Topher’s eggs, ironing his trousers, and teaching him the ABCs of world history, Maro still finds time for his research. Despite his fatherly chores, the island’s soirées, hosted by Topher’s formidably intelligent biological sister, are as stimulating as they are validating. With her, Maro can talk about Illyrian history, and Topher doesn’t have to measure up to the island’s impossible standards. Maro settles into domestic bliss until one evening, he runs out of salt. When he visits the neighboring house to borrow some, he finds Topher’s sister dead.

Her murder becomes yet another family secret, kept under the guise of the greater good. Though urged to protect the island with his silence, Maro investigates her unfathomable passing. Inheritance, he learns, is control, and if you’re family, you’re already complicit. In Sol, Maro finds his first real home. He struggles to trade it for the unsettling truth that his son Topher insists on. This island is far from a meritocratic refuge. It is a place you would never want to visit, even if you were good enough to get the call.

I am a Croatian author writing in English. I hold a degree in dramaturgy and have worked as a narrative designer in interactive media, developing story-driven projects for large mobile gaming studios.

I hope you enjoy the attached pages and the synopsis.

Best regards,

I'd love to get some feedback on a potential opening chapter for my novel. The premise of the novel is pretty high concept and the novel blends thriller with speculative fiction. The title of the post is pretty much the premise, except someone gets murdered too and it's all set during a very weird social experiment that takes place on an island full of ridiculously rich people. There's a lot I tried to convey in the opener, and I'm also quite unsure whether my style reads well.

Below is the text of the chapter:

>There are no damn mirrors in my brand new son’s foyer. I'd love to know how much warmth my puffy face can muster up this morning. First impressions are crucial but I’m going in blind and sleep deprived. At two AM last night, the signed adoption papers left my hands and entered the system. My eye has been twitching ever since, so I take the stairs down to him instead of the elevator, to give my eye one last chance to stop twitching. Worrying the kid as soon as I meet him is the last thing I want. My anxiety must remain my problem only, but I’m sure it will pass the second I see him smile. Will his hair be curly like mine? Eyes brown, blue or green? Passing for his real father would be nice. Not sure what kind of a dad I’ll be, anyway. Real sounds like a long shot. At 32, this is my first try. I’m hardly qualified, but Hilma chose me, and she chooses the best, I’ve learned. I, however, thought she was the best. “He needs a father.” she repeated over and over again last night whenever I’d ask why she doesn’t just raise her brother herself. 

As the leather soles of the shoes I’d never afford, hadn’t Hilma gifted them to me last night, echo down the marble of the stairs, I realize how foolish it was of me to think the house I saw from the road was the whole thing. With their budget, this building is but a hallway. Passing a monumental painting every few stairs, every landing a new sculpture, I make my way down the cliff. That’s where my new home surely hides, hanging over the sea. It’s awfully quiet here in the stairwell, I can hear the waves crashing.

“Hello!” I exclaim to the ether, waiting for a doorman or any other responsible adult to notice my arrival. I’m alone. The introduction is in my hands only. Great. The hands now start shaking too.

At the third landing, a large glass set of doors stops my descent. On the other side, a poured-in-place rubber path sprawls gently down towards the Adriatic. No sight of the house yet, just Spanish Broom bushes and Aleppo Pines bent down to the ground by our harsh winds. These are new words I learned when I started dealing with foreigners. So exotic when you call them that, the plants of my childhood entirely spent on the beach, I can smell them all through the door. It smells like home.
Relieved to finally catch my reflection in the door, I try to charm it. Could have skipped that. My other eye might start twitching too at the sight of me, so disheveled yet ironically clad in a gifted linen suit. I hope the kid is older than three, otherwise he might burst into tears when he sees me. I’m a ghastly apparition that hardly belongs in a sunbathed mansion.

Outside, the rubber floor yields to my soles, cushy, safe for an unruly child. A few steps off the path, a private playground rusts, fully overgrown. Just across the sea, on the mainland, we can’t afford all this fancy metal. A kid like my son can choose to cast aside any toy, even if it is an entire baby-proofed playground most can only dream of. 
Almost down to sea level, I reach the end of my path and face a door so modern, that its mechanism is a complete mystery to me. I knock. I push. I look for buttons, but nothing moves.

“U pičku materinu.” I curse against the gentle breeze and the chirping of birds. What an idyllic place I’ve found to be so upset at!

“Jebena vrata.” I continue, knowing there’s no harm in profanities, even if my son hears me. He doesn’t speak our language, that’s one thing I know for sure.
Tired, I lean on the wall. Click. Like an ancient temple in a B movie, the house lets me in because I leaned on the right stone. Ajar just a slit, I try to swing the door wide open, but something blocks it from the other side. Squeezing in through the little space I have, my soft body giving way to the door, I regret every burger I’ve ever eaten. 

There is barely any daylight in the stuffed room I find myself in but I still see the cause of my graceless entrance. Boxes. Tipping towers of them. Some wet, some crushed, all of them filled to the brim. A shampoo bottle leaks onto a keyboard on top of the box blocking the door, but I mustn’t pry. Hilma dropped me off in front of the wrong door, hopefully. A kid can’t live like this. 

Daylight pours in from far beyond the boxes. There, an older man paces in his pajamas, long unruly hair framing his face. Finally, a living soul. 

“Good morning. I’m here to meet Topher.” I say, trying to enter as respectfully as possible. The man turns to me, his eyes lighting up.

“Maro?! What took you so long and how the hell did you get into the closet?!” the man says, in such a familiar tone, his smile so wide that it wrinkles his whole face - crows feet, smile lines, the complete package. 

“I’m so sorry. I took the stairs and they just led me here.”

“My bad. The closet is technically the old entrance. We assumed you’d take the lift. Everyone takes the lift. Sorry, Hilma should have warned you. Welcome!” He says and without a warning hugs me tightly. The man lingers there for too long, taking in a deep breath. I do my best to wiggle out, still, respectfully. I don’t know who I’m talking to. Offending the residents of this island is always a bad idea.

The man releases me and says “Have a seat, dad. I’m making you a welcome breakfast.”

My sweet little Topher? This is him? My son? I move my gaze across the living room, a marvel of design and architecture, as little black dots infest my vision. I’m going to be sick. Deep breaths.

“Oh, shit. Can you smell the smoke too?” Topher misinterprets my heavy breathing and runs off. There goes the breakfast, too.

Trying not to panic, I sit down on the twelve seater sofa, as instructed. This is what Hilma meant when she said “He’s not that little.”. I’m a parent now. There is no turning back. My mind races through all the binding clauses I’ve signed until Topher returns. He throws himself on the sofa, up against me, despite all the empty space. His body splays out, belly spilling out of his pajamas, as I cross my arms harder.

With soot on his nose, he says “We’re going to have to order in.”

“You have a little something-“ I say and wipe the soot off my son’s nose with the cuff of my blazer. 

“I can’t believe you just did that, dad.” Topher bursts out laughing. Nothing funny about it to me. It’s in the contract. 

At least his hair looks just like mine, curly and dark. I could pass for his younger brother.