GaBeRock

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Jan 6th, 2026
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  1. main critiques:
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  3. >Stef is an exiled witch imprisoned outside of time. Kevin is a human trapped in the prison of his own life choices. Their lives are forever linked when Stef casts a desperate spell, turning Kevin into a magic siphon that entangles him with the magic threads of the ones who imprisoned her.
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  5. There's a lot of context missing from this paragraph. You describe the circumstances your characters originally find themselves in, but I don't get any sense of the characters themselves-- their motivations or their personalities. In particular I'm not clear why Stef cast this spell on Kevin, or why she was imprisoned, or what Kevin did to get involved with any of this.
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  7. >Driven by the dangerous allure of this stolen magic, and thrust into new surreal adventures, Kevin pushes forward to confront what lies beyond his small bubble of mediocrity.
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  9. There's a lot of vagueness here. Why is the stolen magic "dangerous"? Why is it "alluring?" What makes their adventures "surreal"? How is Kevin in a "mediocre bubble"? Concrete details would give a better sense of not just the appeal of the work, but your own skills as a writer. For example, "Driven by the need to \[get his stolen magic under control before it blows up every build-a-bear workshop in Manhattan\]."
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  11. >This sets him up to clash with Michael,
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  13. I suggest rewriting this to use the active voice, and also specifying exactly what Kevin does to precipitate the clash. I'd bet it's not just "pushing forward" that causes the confrontation-- Michael does something specific in the book to cause the confrontation, like go somewhere he isn't supposed to be, or do something he isn't supposed to do, right? So this can be something like, "But when Kevin uses his stolen magic to un-googly all the googly eyes, that puts him at odds with Michael, \[because of something something\]".
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  15. >...the second in command of Weaver kind and the one Weaver who holds the key to Stef’s escape.
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  17. The first mention we get of "Weaver kind" is in reference to Michael being their second in command. What "weaver kind" is and why they're Stef's enemy seems like critical background information you should be including in the previous paragraph to help establish Stef's situation and motivations.
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  19. >\~This is all part of Stef’s plan.\~ Unbeknownst to Kevin, he is merely playing his part as Stef’s pawn in her plan for revenge against the Weaver Capital and its leader.
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  21. First sentence is redundant in light of the second.
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  23. >The one who locked her away for eternity. Her own mother.
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  25. I'm going to guess that you saved this for the end of the paragraph because the reveal of who locked Stef away is the book's big midpoint twist. Unfortunately the reveal doesn't have much of an effect in the query because you haven't established any tension over who Stef's captor was.
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  27. >When Kevin kills Michael and Stef shatters the wards that bind her, they must each make choices on how to deal with the consequences of their actions.
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  29. Vagueness again. I can see the outlines of how "Kevin killing Michael" and "Stef shattering her wards" might be big moments in the book, but you haven't actually established the importance of Kevin and Stef's wards enough for me to guess at what exactly the "consequences of their actions" are. I think you can present this as your big midpoint twist with some rethinking, though. Establish what Michael does, what Stef's wards do, what what their continued existence prevents from happening (the achievement of Kevin's and Stef's goals, which are... what? The intervention of some greater, meaner power?) so that these events come as a twist within the query itself.
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  31. Also, at this point I'm noticing that it doesn't seem like Kevin and Stef have interacted much at all, I can't tell if they're adversarial, friendly, wary, etc. This query really isn't selling their relationship to me, which is a **huge** problem. This is, I think, the single biggest problem with the query.
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  33. >Stef begins phase two by recruiting Kevin directly into her sprawling schemes. Their partnership is a fraught one as Kevin has no idea Stef is responsible for his descent into a magical world that may be too much for his human mind to comprehend.
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  35. More vagueness here. I still don't understand Kevin's motivations, and therefore what Stef could do to recruit him. Also, what exactly does "fraught" look like? Is Kevin clueless, but Stef wracked with guilt? If Kevin initially trusting, but progressively more suspicious?
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  37. >Their complex, and magic tainted relationship is at the center of this fantasy tale
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  39. Cut this bit. Anyone who reads your query should have already cottoned onto this just based on all the other stuff in your query. If they haven't, then you need to revise your query until they do.
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  41. >that delves into what it means to take control of your own life. By any means necessary.
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  43. Ideally, I should understand that this is the main theme of the book just by reading the rest of the summary. I didn't really get that, however, and I think that's because I don't see much of a sense of progression in terms of how controlled the main character's lives are. You could stand to really establish why the main character's lives were out of their control, and then demonstrate through the inciting incident and 1st-act-escalation that the main characters are taking more and more control of their lives. If you can manage that, they you can cut this bit (since restating something you've already show would be redundant.)
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  45. >The two grapple with their twisting fates by discovering how their own puzzle pieces fit together while weaving a path of bloodshed that changes the realms forever.
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  47. Cut this bit. It's just restating what your reader should already have gleaned from the rest of the summary.
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  49. At this point, if you've established the required background, character motivations, character relationship, and plenty of concrete details about the work, you'll have written up to the midpoint twist and immediate fallout (Stef and Kevin working together, but under pressure because Stef has been manipulating Kevin the whole time.) From there you need to establish what the final stakes of the story are going to be (if they fail to work together, what happens?) And what choices the main characters are going to have to make relative to those stakes. (Will Stef have to choose between telling Kevin everything to save their relationship, or condemn him while getting what she wants? Will Kevin have to choose between forgiving Stef or betraying her?) In the process, you can hint at what the grand finale is going to be. (An army of Weavers? Stef's mom with a steel chair? With Michael dead I'm not sure who the antagonists are going to be for the 3rd arc.)
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  51. After all that... once you have all the *elements* of the query lined up, I would suggest basing the summary from the perspective of one of the two character, and then really making it clear how they feel about everything that's going on. Your query gave us a kind of birds-eye view of what happens, when what it really needs to do is get to the eye level of the POV characters.
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  53. >The Weave takes on the fantasy narratives of novels like A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas and turns it on its head by combining it with the surreal and descriptive writing style of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer.
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  55. You're comping a very well known romance novel and have a whole of romance tropes (especially the dual his pov/her pov thing) but so far haven't explicitly mentioned romance. If you *are* writing a romance you need to completely refocus your summary on that, framing everything in terms of the progression of the Main Character's relationships. If you aren't, you need to make it equally clear that you're doing something different-- including by not using a romance novel comp.
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  57. Also I probably wouldn't include a sci-fi comp. Dual POV romance/conspicously non-romance work + Piranesi should do.
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  59. nits:
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  61. >The Weave is an adult fantasy novel
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  63. names of published books should be italicized, names of unpublished manuscripts should be in all caps. Should be,
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  65. >It features a dual POV narrative that intertwines the lives of **our** two protagonists
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  67. I would cut "our" since they're not (yet) the agent's protagonists.
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  69. Also, I think you can stand to just name (+characterize?) the protagonists here and say something like, "THE WEAVE is an dual POV adult fantasy novel about \[Jim and Bob, two sea lions in love, idk\]."
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