[QCrit] ADULT Fantasy/Coming of Age/Mystery - THE CONTRARY STONE (119k words/First attempt)

Hello PubTips. Related MS is a work in progress. I’ve started working on the query and am seeking feedback/critique. Still thinking about comps.

Names and terminology are mostly placeholder.

[Housekeeping/comps to go here]

When Mallory turns seventeen, her orbstone will hatch, and she will be judged before her peers. It’s supposed to be traumatic. Not deadly. Not cursed.

Despite the best efforts of her beloved adoptive parents, the isolated keep which took her in as a child still doesn’t feel like home. Mallory’s counting on judgement to change that. After seven years’ gutting and scaling the catch, she (along with self-declared friend, Ben) means to apprentice with the revered cliff-fishers of the outpost. As a caster she’ll get a chance to earn her place (and with a little luck, put nemesis, Preston, in his).

But the Keeper disregards Mallory’s undisputed affinity for the sea. Judging her still-bloody orbstone (which should have come out blue, not leaf-loving green!), he condemns her to life as a gatherer. So much for wiping the grin off Preston’s face.

Mallory copes by attempting to dig up records of her birth-parents’ deaths. Instead of finding closure (not to mention, an excuse to brood), she discovers they might be alive. To make matters worse, her activities disturb a long-dormant entity, supposed to exist only in a grim children’s rhyme. The former suggests everyone she trusts has lied; could even mean she’s an enemy of the state. The latter encounter (and Mallory’s conspicuous survival of same) draws the attention of the Grey Guild—the only sanctioned wielders of magic, and guardians against things which walk unseen.

When the Grey Guild comes for her, Ben’s younger brother surrenders in her place—settlement of a debt she never wanted repaid. It buys her time. Doubtless, the guild will return once they realise their mistake, but not until spring breaks the choke-hold of winter. In the meantime, Mallory will have answers. Even if it kills her. Even if it kills them all. And the truth just might.