Feedback Request

Hello, I wrote to you a little while ago about the query for eradicated. I was wondering if the version below is better and if you like the ending or the alternate ending more. If you have time please take a look.


Warrior in training, Maya Richardson has a secret: she can time travel. It’s not as exciting as it sounds. In fact, it sucks. She can’t control it, she always returns to when and where she started, it’s proceeded [preceded] by debilitating vomiting and followed by a migraine from hell. To make matters worse, the commune she lives in believes that anyone with powers is Gliesian, a crime punishable by death. And Gliesians—the alien race that has conquered the earth—believe that a human with powers is a threat that must be eradicated.

To stay alive, Maya knows she must learn to control and hide her power. But before she can, her mother is abducted. Maya knows the answers to her mother’s disappearance lies within the glittering walls of the Gliesian city, Tajel, but the commune elders refuse to let Maya leave the compound to rescue her mom. [The answer lies or the answers lie, but not the answers lies. Although I don't think of a disappearance as something that has an answer. Why not just say her mother is abducted and taken to Tajel?] With the help of an unlikely ally, Maya escapes from the commune only to be taken hostage by the Gliesian government. Imprisoned with other humans, she discovers that her mom isn’t the only person to end up missing; humans have been disappearing in droves from cities all over the planet. The lucky ones are killed and the unlucky ones are used as human batteries to power the cities-- a fate worse than death. [If humans are needed to power the cities, why do the Gliesians kill the "lucky ones"?]

Maya has to control her powers to save her mom and herself. But she’s going to need help. Her only option is to travel back in time and convince the commune to fight the Gliesian government, but time traveling will land her back on commune grounds and expose her secret. If the commune elders know her secret, saving her mom will be the least of her worries. [When you say she's going to need help, I assume you mean help learning to control her powers. Instead you gloss over the fact that she can't control them and move on to getting help in the past from the commune.]

Alternate ending
To save her mom and herself, Maya is going to need help. She has to travel back in time and convince the commune elders that it’s time for what they’ve been preparing her for: war. But to do so Maya must use her powers, which have been temperamental at best. Will Maya master her powers in time to save her mom? And if she does can she convince the elders that it’s time to fight and she isn’t the enemy?


Notes

I'm not clear on this "always ends up when and where she started" aspect of time travel. If she time travels from her prison in Tajel, I would expect her to return to Tajel, not to the commune. It's not clear whether she always time travels to the commune or always ends up there after her time travel trip is over.

Is her plan to time travel back to a time before she was born, or a time when she is alive in the commune, in which case there would be two of her?

The Gliesians control cities all over the planet, and Maya needs to convince her puny commune to fight the Gliesian government? That's like the single town of Bedwas, Wales taking on the Axis powers in WWII. Maybe we should focus on saving mom and let someone else worry about the Gliesian threat.

I'm not sure why she needs to suck at controlling her powers in the book, but I don't see that as an important point to bring up in the query. It just makes me wonder, if she can't control the time and place she ends up when she time travels, how can she accomplish anything unless she gets lucky? If she needs to go back a year and instead goes back 2000 years, what's she gonna do? What exactly do you mean by she can't control her power? Can she control the date to which she travels? Can she control the place to which she travels? Can she control when she travels, or does it just happen randomly? You don't want me wondering all this, and you don't have room to answer it all, so maybe you should just let us think she can control her time travel.

I'm not thrilled with either ending. Perhaps:

To save her mom and herself, Maya will have to travel back in time and convince the commune elders that they must go to war . . . and that she isn’t the enemy.