[QCrit] Adult Fantasy - Pebbles Cascading Change (114k/Ninth Attempt)

I didn't really get any feedback on my previous attempt, and changes are very minor; however, there are major changes from #7 where I did receive a lot of good feedback: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1kne2gz/qcrit_adult_fantasy_pebbles_cascading_change/ Thank you u/CHRSBVNS and u/A_C_Shock

Attn. [agent],

After reading your manuscript wish list, I thought my manuscript may be of some interest to you. [insert something specific]

PEBBLES CASCADING CHANGE is an adult fantasy novel. Complete at 114,000 words, this is a standalone novel with groundwork laid for expansion into a trilogy. It will appeal to readers who enjoy some of the darker elements and hidden magic of Richard Swan’s Grave Empire, themes around family, identity and belonging present in Simon Jimenez’s The Spear Cuts Through Water, and the political maneuverings of underdogs in James Islington’s The Will of the Many.

Miram serves her goddess Videntoir faithfully, so she is devastated when she is cursed with glimpses of the future—heresy punishable by death. Nearly as bad are the visions themselves: her mentoring priest making inappropriate advances on her friend. A gamble, Miram confides in her friend, implores her to flee with her and her brother, only to be rejected. With her secret revealed, Miram is forced to flee everything she’s ever known, and she and her brother barely escape with their lives.

Miram and her brother traverse hostile terrain in search of a safe haven. They are betrayed by smugglers and separated before reaching the forests in the north. There, Miram meets a man with her same powers who reveals the truth: she was not seeing the future all this time, but the past—a gift from the goddess, not a curse. She had failed her friend from the beginning. With this revelation comes another shocking vision: war looms on the horizon between the theocratic empire and one of its more tolerant adversaries—they just elected someone ‘cursed’ as their head of state.

Committed to Videntoir with a newfound zeal, Miram feels obligated to prevent the war and reform the temple—to help her friend and others like her. Since she is blessed by the goddess, she decides to assert herself as seer—to be installed as the head of the temple and to use that influence to stop the war. As she begins to challenge the system, enemies from within move to silence her. Her brother is taken and his life threatened. In the end, she must decide between saving her only family and doing what is best for the temple, her people, and the continent.

I’m a queer writer living in Columbus, OH. I have a PhD in medicinal chemistry and teach yoga, with a moderate social media following. As for writing, I have published a handful of poems in various literary magazines and have completed a month-long residency with a fiction focus.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration; please let me know if you have any questions or if you would like me to send the full manuscript.