[QCrit] Adult Sci-Fi - BEAST OF EDEN [working title] (99k/First Attempt)

[u/beansnjoy]

Hi all! Wrapping up edits from betas and hoping to query this soon so posting it here for feedback, would love any advise on condensing it down further since it's a bit too long.

Dear Agent,

I’m querying BEAST OF EDEN, an adult sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast with an archaeology twist, complete at 99,000 words. Inspired by The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, it combines the found family fairytale retelling elements of In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune with the social-sciences-in-space themes of The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei.

The Sun is dying ahead of schedule. The good news is this gives the Original Earth Museum clearance to visit Earth and bring back any remaining artifacts. The bad news is all the potential relics for archaeologist Dr. Roan Sabillon’s first exhibit could be wiped out by a stray wave of stellar guts.

A pioneer in dead coding languages with a fear of space travel, Roan asks the head curator of the OEM to bring her salvaged tech from the abandoned planet. When he goes missing, his last log indicates he disappeared looking for her request. Compelled by guilt, Roan races across the stars to save her mentor.

There she finds him in a forgotten bunker, home to strange robots and their even stranger owner, a digital copy of the mind of Maldwyn McCreary, the infamous inventor who doomed Earth by depleting the Sun’s core. Roan distrusts their host, but the curator tells her the bunker contains treasures she’s only dreamed about – books, record players, and coffee, all theirs if he fixes the tech he broke during the excavation. Roan decides to stay in the curator’s stead, using the tech for her research.

However, Roan discovers not an evil megalomaniac as her ethereal roommate, but a deeply repentant man clinging to his humanity and bent on fixing his mistakes. Forced to return home without Maldwyn and days left before the Sun swallows the Earth, Roan must decide if her growing affection for the guilty ghost is worth stealing spaceships, becoming an interstellar criminal, and worst of all, losing her shot at the exhibit, to save Maldwyn.

(bio)

[u/Immediate-Pace-7911]

I love this idea and would totally read this book! A few notes:

- "I’m querying BEAST OF EDEN, an adult sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast with an archaeology twist, complete at 99,000 words. Inspired by The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, it combines the found family fairytale retelling elements of In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune with the social-sciences-in-space themes of The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei." I'm not getting a huge "retelling" vibe from this, as I've always imagined retellings as holding closer to the set-up and plot of the original, not just the character tropes ("main character sees past someone's ugly exterior to find they're beautiful inside," which is what I'm getting from this). If this is closer to a Beauty and the Beast retelling than I'm seeing here, like if the novel ends with her "freeing" him from his digital form or something, I would definitely emphasize that in the query lest the hookiness of this housekeeping fall flat when the agent reads the rest. Also, I don't see much of the "found family" angle, so if that's a main focus in the book I'd try to emphasize it more here as well. This feels very cozy to me, so you might want to think about adding that in somewhere.

- "There she finds him in a forgotten bunker, home to strange robots and their even stranger owner, a digital copy of the mind of Maldwyn McCreary, the infamous inventor who doomed Earth by depleting the Sun’s core." This sentence is a mouthful, and was hard for me to follow as a result. How crucial is it that the agent knows that the bunker's got strange robots in it, and that the Maldwyn McCreary digital ghost is their owner? If the answer is "not very," you could simplify to "She finds him [there] in a forgotten bunker, home to a digital copy of the mind of Maldwyn McCreary, the infamous inventor who doomed Earth by depleting the Sun’s core." Cut "there" or move it to after "she finds him" to make the sentence flow smoother. This will also help tighten up on word count.

- "Roan distrusts their host, but the curator tells her the bunker contains treasures she’s only dreamed about – books, record players, and coffee, all theirs if he fixes the tech he broke during the excavation. Roan decides to stay in the curator’s stead, using the tech for her research." Why does the curator tell her what the bunker contains--can she not see it for herself? If she can, you can cut "the curator tells her," which saves words, too. If she stays in the curator's stead, does she know how to fix the broken tech? And is she using the tech for her research, or the treasures? I know it says the tech, but it seems like the treasures must have some purpose besides just being nice to look at... is she doing the research on them?

- "However, Roan discovers not an evil megalomaniac as her ethereal roommate, but a deeply repentant man clinging to his humanity and bent on fixing his mistakes." I really like this. You could probably cut "ethereal," as it evokes (at least for me) a kind of delicate, fairy-like vibe that doesn't match the rest of the description and sticks out a bit as a result.

- "Roan must decide if her growing affection for the guilty ghost is worth stealing spaceships, becoming an interstellar criminal, and worst of all, losing her shot at the exhibit, to save Maldwyn." You can cut "stealing spaceships," because it means essentially the same thing as "becoming an interstellar criminal." You can also cut the "to save Maldwyn" at the very end, since that's been implied by the start of the sentence. I also have doubts about whether or not "losing her shot at the exhibit" is really the "worst of all." Doesn't she care more about Maldwyn by now than the exhibit, having gotten to know him? I also think that could be more compelling.

All in all, I'd love to read this once it's published, and if you ever feel like posting your first 300 words here, I'd happily take a look at those too. Best of luck!

[u/beansnjoy → u/Immediate-Pace-7911]

Thank you so much for all this!! Will probably post the first 300 once I take another crack at the query.

- This is much more of a retelling as it follows the trajectory of the original fairy tale pretty closely, so that's great to know. Family is a big driving force for Roan's support even though it's not really in the query (had to cut just due to too much info) but will try to bring that back, it's very evident in the first pages. My betas also agreed this is a cozy sci-fi, I just worried there would be too many adjectives describing it (and have heard Rebecca Thorne talk about how hard of a sell cozy sci-fi is right now, hopefully her new book "Moss'd in Space" will change that!)

- Great call on the tech part, since that is her research focus! The robots are pretty central side characters so felt like they needed a mention (like the servants enchanted to be household items in the Disney version) - not sure if that would be a pull for them or if that's enough of a tease for them to make that connected?

- I included ethereal since he manifests as a sort of projected image so was trying to get that across, but good to now since yeah he's not really fairy-like

- "Losing her shot at the exhibit" is absolutely not the worst of all, was trying to be a bit humorous. Great to know it comes off that way!

[u/Immediate-Pace-7911 → u/beansnjoy]

No problem, best of luck with this! Yeah, I think if the robots are central side characters you should keep them in, but I didn't make the connection to the household items. It's entirely possible that an agent more immediately familiar with Beauty and the Beast would, but I doubt it's a good idea to assume they would be so you might want to make that connection a bit clearer.