full image - Repost: [QCrit] Adult near future speculative thriller, POSSUM KINGDOM ( 114k words, 1st attempt) (from Reddit.com, [QCrit] Adult near future speculative thriller, POSSUM KINGDOM ( 114k words, 1st attempt))
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A few things/concerns.1- I’m worried the world reads as too generic (well, as far as this type of stuff goes). I tried not to delve too much into specifics, but am concerned it sucked any potential uniqueness out of it.2- I don’t love my last sentence. I hope people can understand the theme I’m going for, even if it doesn’t sound amazing.3- Anyone who is a fan of Watership Down will likely (hopefully?) recognize the skeleton of the story, which is why I put “inspired by” at the end with other comps. I have no idea what, if anything is proper and appropriate - the story is generally inspired by it, but it’s certainly not a copy or a strict retelling.4- Right now I have the age as adult but my beta reader thinks it's right on the edge of YA. Just curious how the query as written reads to people. Obviously the main characters are 17-18. There’s no swearing, no sex, but a decent amount of violence and obviously heavy themes. And the comps I’ve chosen are adult.QUERYIn 2098 a ragtag group led by 18-year old Red leave their small underground settlement after her brother Will dreams of a calamity that will soon destroy them all. Red and her crew call themselves possums - remnant human survivors of natural and man-made disasters living precariously on the outskirts of society so weak and vulnerable they play dead when in danger. They live in what was the Upper Midwest but is now a dead zone of barren fields devoid of life. It’s been devastated by war, made bone-dry and laid bare by drought and wildfires, and cut off from the world by the complete breakdown of electricity and cyber networks.The possums head north, on a whisper of a rumor - a land of abundant fresh water, clean air, and safety once known as Michigan. Red leads them on foot, with little shelter but what they can dig for and little food and water but what they can scavenge from the largely infertile land. On their way they’ll meet militant fellow survivors, delusional cultists, and the ethereal presence of monstrous Beings, mysterious creatures that came to the continent two decades ago who prey on the ruins of society, their motives and origin unknown.Red and the possums are armed only with shovels, the scraps of cloth on their back, and a miraculously functional Sony Walkman playing 1990’s grunge. She struggles to keep the possums together as they face dangers from both outside and from within. To survive the journey and keep them safe she’ll need to be ruthless and unyielding - but the cost could be her remaining humanity.POSSUM KINGDOM (114,000 words) is a near future speculative thriller inspired by Watership Down by Richard Adams that will appeal to readers who enjoy the climate-changed induced setting and found family dynamics of Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling and the humanistic journey of A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, by C.A. Fletcher
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