[QCRIT] The Geomancer's Garden - Middle Grade Fantasy - 40k Words + First 300
Hello! Thank you for taking a look at my query and/or first 300. I am excited to receive any and all feedback.
THE GEOMANCER’S GARDEN, complete at 40,000 words, is a middle grade fantasy novel with series potential. It celebrates the natural world like Greenwild by Pari Thomson and The Girl From Earth’s End by Tara Dairman, features a strong intergenerational relationship and unique pet companion like in Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures, and will additionally appeal to fans of the magical adventures in Kamome Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier manga series.
Unlike her grandmother, eleven-year-old Marin can’t do magic. Gran is a geomancer, with magical influence over the natural elements, but Marin hates bugs and can barely keep plants alive. She would rather everything go back to normal—before the earthquake that claimed her parents’ lives and before she was sent to live in Gran’s clifftop cottage away from her friends.
But the signs in the soil are clear: black smoke rising from the village beneath the cliff is slowly poisoning Gran’s garden and twisting magic. Against Gran’s wishes, Marin sneaks down to the village to investigate, only to be met with hostility. The villagers know they would starve if it wasn’t for Gran’s produce, but the new power plant producing the smoke also provides the village with jobs, housing, and a different type of magic: electricity.
When sudden wildfires ravage both the village and Gran’s garden, everything changes. Gran is forced to defend the power plant from fire to prevent an explosion and Marin vows to help save the villagers. But the village fears her, and worse, the power plant’s owner blames magic for these disasters. With the help of an energetic pet onion, ingenuity, and maybe a little geomancy of her own, Marin must convince the villagers to unite, or else the village, Gran’s garden, and even magic itself, could be lost for good.
I live in [location] with [family], where I read science fiction and fantasy novels, play video games, and garden by the ocean. I am a [occupation] and a graduate of both [University 1] and [University 2]. THE GEOMANCER’S GARDEN would be my debut novel.
Then the first ~300. Let me know if this is an effective introduction to character and setting and if anything in the writing stands out as particularly egregious (or worse, dull.)
Marin squints her eyes and sticks her index finger deep into the soil. Beneath the surface, it feels cool and damp against her skin. She tries to ignore what else might be hidden in the dirt and focuses instead on her Gran’s instructions.
Of course, nothing happens. Nothing ever does. And, Marin fears, nothing ever will.
Her rectangular plot stands near the center of Gran’s cliffside garden. Each raised bed is neatly framed by stacked logs from fallen trees and filled to the brim with loamy soil. Gran arranged them into four by four rows of garden beds, sixteen plots in total, fifteen of which are overflowing with abundant vegetation.
All except for Marin’s.
It’s like nature itself is mocking her. Plants surround Marin on all sides. They point their leaves and flowers inward toward her and suppress their seedy laughs at the silly girl with her dirty, non-magical finger submerged. Their roots spread wide and deep. And Marin? She has only lived there a year. They know she doesn’t belong.
A crisp salt breeze from the nearby bay shuffles hummingbirds from water lily-shaped dahlias to sweet-smelling white jasmine flowers. Their impossibly fast wings and bright fuchsia chests dazzle in the morning sun. Marin hears a frog croak somewhere nearby. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches a blue-bellied lizard scamper beneath the foliage. She doesn’t see any bugs—thankfully no bugs!—even though she knows they are there. Somewhere. Hiding.
She wants to think about anything other than bugs, which means that all she can think about are bugs. She quickly withdraws her finger from the soil and wipes it on her apron. Fingernails once painted pinks and purples are now chipped with brown soot stuck underneath them. The morning sun warms her face and she knows freckles will soon follow.
“I’m no good at this,” Marin mutters to no one in particular. It isn’t the plants. They already know. It isn’t the lizards. They already left.
Thank you again!
Posted Mar 30, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC