Feedback Request

 

The author of the book featured in Face-Lift 1485 would like feedback on the following revision:

Dear [Full Name]

Seventeen-year-old Ruyi should work on better distancing herself from her imprisoned, occult-obsessed, serial killer dad. Instead, she’s using his spellbook to resurrect her girlfriend Manon, who mysteriously drowned. The resurrection goes awry when Ruyi botches a pronunciation and summons Syx, an injured entity from outer space. And it’s trapped inside Manon’s body, unable to leave. 

A desperate Ruyi makes a deal with Syx: she’ll help heal it in exchange for Manon’s resurrection. [How can Syx provide Manon's resurrection?] In the meantime, Ruyi will feed Syx whenever it needs to be fed while making sure no one in their boarding school thinks something is off. If Ruyi can handle pulling all-nighters then she can absolutely handle Syx’s requests for fresh meat.

But when a sleep-deprived Ruyi accidentally kills another student with her car, she panics and turns to Syx for help with getting rid of the body. What she doesn’t expect is Syx’[s] demands for more human flesh while refusing to eat anything else. Now, Ruyi wonders if she’s willing to sacrifice her morals and murder people like her dad once did. Or, if she should give up [on?] Manon’s resurrection and let her corpse be permanently controlled by a dangerous creature. 

CORPSEBORNE is an (est. 80000)-word YA horror. It combines the eldritch horror of I Feed Her To The Beast And The Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea and the dark yet intimate vibes of Don’t Let The Forest In by C.G. Drews. [bio here] Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Notes

This is a big improvement, but it leads me to ask questions about the plot that may be answered in the book:

As I understand it, the spell book includes a spell that will resurrect a dead person, and this spell is almost exactly the same as a spell that will summon an entity from outer space. Why would there even be a spell that can summon an entity from outer space? Was this entity in orbit around Earth or just somewhere in the galaxy? I think it would be better if the spell did something similar to the resurrection Ruyi wants, like summoning a malignant spirit from hell.

Unless Ruyi is going to be getting fresh meat from a grocery store, I'm not convinced that keeping Syx fed is going to be as easy as pulling an all-nighter.

If there's a spell that'll send an entity back into outer space, Ruyi should use it to get rid of Syx, then do the resurrection herself, this time without botching the pronunciation. And if there isn't a spell to send Syx back into space, Syx is going to stay in Manon's body and start killing people as soon as it's healthy. As far as I can tell, murdering people serves only to keep Syx alive, and does nothing for Ruyi or Manon.

Even if these points are covered in the book, if they cause the agent to balk at requesting the manuscript, you might want to cover them in the query or edit out the parts that inspire the questions.