Need help with my Query please.

[J.R.]

Watch your verb tenses. You're transitioning between present tense and past tense, and it makes the blurb sound choppy. You also have some proofreading issues like "lens" is misspelled.

You can also try to shorten the blurb:

Draxxi has had enough. After enduring one last night of horrors at the hands of her parents and the rich man who loves torturing her, she makes her choice: Go on the run as a killer.

Draxxi soon joins the caravan of General Magnus. Betrayed by his king and desperate to save his daughter who has been sent as a sacrifice to invoke the dragon king, Magnus is fighting a multi-front war. With the help of a group of barbarians, a shadowy island chief's son, an ancient colossi hunter, and the princesses of the deposed king, he must find a way to stop the ritual, save his daughter, and stop the dragon king from unmaking existence.

I'm not sure this blurb works as well as it could, however. I'm having a hard time understanding Draxxi's stakes and why she cares about Magnus's quest -- I get she joins their caravan, but what connection do they have? What role does she play? I'm assuming it has something to do with her queen being a sister, but that's never clarified.

Also, you start out with the line, "Kill her parents or accept life as a whore" and there's never any explicit reference again to killing her parents or selling herself for sex in the blurb. Do you mean to imply she kills everyone and goes on the run, using being a whore to survive? And is this backstory or is it something that happens in the book?

The references to the king and the dragon king confused me somewhat (I assume these are two different people) and at the very end you throw in something about the dragon king unmaking existence which feels like maybe it should have come in sooner.

I think you have a solid start, but I'd keep working on it for now. You're only really going to get one chance to impress an agent, so you want to make sure your query is as perfect and solid as you can make it. Good luck!

[J.R.]

That does help.

Two seperate thoughts:

1. You've made it sound like this book you're pitching is almost like a prologue to the series -- i.e. Draxxi is the MC of the series, but here, she isn't the MC. If that's the case, strategically, maybe this is not the book you want to pitch? Maybe you want to pitch book 2? Start in the middle like Lucas did in Star Wars? Just something to think about.

2. For purposes of querying, I think the general advice is its not a good idea to pitch a whole series as a new author; it's better to just leave open the possibility of one. Traditional publishing is cruel. If book one doesn't succeed, then traditional publishers often drop authors.

That being the case, I would think about the query as for this book only. I know that's really hard to do when you've mapped out an entire series, but assume the worst case that this is the only story that gets published. Who is the MC of *this* particular story? What do they want? What are the stakes? How is Daxxi the catalyst?

I'd also suggest maybe varying away from the traditional advice of starting with a character and starting with the state of the world and the dragon king if this is more of a plot-based story.

Also, I would say even if Magnus function is as a MacGuffin to the overall series, if he's a main character to this book, he should be featured as such. Again, try to think about this story in isolation, maybe bringing in the hint of what's to come in the final line or two.

I don't know if any of that helps, but these are some things to think about.