Genre: YA science-fiction.
Word Count: 60,000
Query:
Eighteen-year-old Lana would do anything to honor her father, killed the day he discovered The End World, a devastated parallel planet. So, when Earth calls for prodigies to study and rebuild The End World, Lana packs up her kick-ass attitude and F-bomb slippery tongue to become a Spinner, traveling between the two worlds and escorting researchers throughout the devastated landscape.
One problem: the survivors consider them invaders, and one screw up could spark an inter-dimensional war.
Appointed as the youngest Headsquad, she agrees to set up a truce with the survivors' leader, but when she learns he’s the one who killed her father, she’s faced with a gut-ripping choice: follow her orders and develop peace, or avenge her father’s death and risk war.
First 250:
If Headsquad Russell had ordered me three years ago to climb a four story building in eighty-degree weather, I’d have told him to fuck off. By now, I had learned to say “Yes, Sir” like any good Spinner, and would’ve climbed a skyscraper if I had to.
“Must be my lucky day,” I muttered as I reached the third story. The faded theater sign stood on side of me, most of its plastic letters lost in time. There was no telling the last movie playing before the End World went to hell. Finding similarities and differences between Earth and this dump was a pastime of mine. Researchers said the comparison ratio was about seventy-three percent. Who said I had to take their word for it?
I grabbed the rough cement ledge above me and hauled myself up. Across the street, Sal was already lying down, scanning the street with his own NF P90.
Damn, he’s fast.
His voice crackled in my earplant. “Need to lose a few pounds, girlfriend. Soon you won’t be able to climb a speed bump.”
I gave him the finger.
“Love you too, Lana.”
“Just focus, will you,” I hissed in my vocollar, taking his silence as agreement.
I squirmed at the idea of getting the implants burrowed into my eardrums and vocal cords, but I had to admit, they had saved my apple-shaped butt more than once.
I flattened myself against the hot roof and rested my rifle on the front ledge, my scope lined up with our targets.
The writing is smooth and professional, but I found the opening several lines to be less than compelling. We're not given any reason to find the three years to be significant. Nor did the feat of climbing a four-story building in 80 degree weather seem that outlandish (80 is pretty mild, four stories isn't that high, what's the complaint?).
ReplyDeleteSo try to give us more of a big hook opening. You do get in some basic facts about the End World but you have enough meat for a more dramatic, and illuminating, first page.