Feedback Request

Here's another revision of a recent query (there's one just below it), which I'm posting here rather than in the comments because I have no first-run queries to post here because apparently everyone's query is so perfect they don't need help with it. The original version is here.


Dear EE

Jovan was seven years old the first time his uncle poisoned him.

In some societies, poison tasters are slaves, unskilled and expendable. In Silasta’s high society, they are experts who have secretly protected the city’s rulers for generations. Jovan, whose anxiety and compulsions made him an outsider among his peers, found order and peace in his uncle’s intensive tutelage in their family art of poison proofing, and an unlikely friend in the Heir, Tain. Raised to value honour above all else, Jovan was prepared for the day when he would take up the role of proofer and put another person’s life before his with every meal. Or so he thought.

Jovan’s carefully managed world falls apart when his uncle fails to detect a poison and dies alongside the ruler. Days later, the under-garrisoned city is attacked by Silasta’s indigenous people, the darfri. It’s no coincidence: someone orchestrated both the poisoning and the siege, and evidence suggests one of the city’s Councillors. Duty and friendship compel Jovan to protect Tain, but the traitor is armed with a poison outside Jovan's extensive knowledge, and Tain is struggling to adjust to the new dynamics of their relationship. It seems only a matter of time before the poisoner strikes again, or the city falls.

Investigating the secretive Councillors, Jovan meets a darfri woman who challenges his views about the city, and his place in it. He discovers an ugly truth about Silasta: the darfri have been systematically excluded from schools and Guilds, and forced into servitude, poverty and effective slavery. Jovan must find a way to balance the fate of the city he has always loved--and the life of his only real friend--with his sympathies for the rebellion. Finding the traitor becomes more than just preserving his life and honour, but his chance for a future he never knew he wanted.

PROOF is a 120,000 word novel combining elements of fantasy and suspense.

Thank you for your consideration.