TITLE: The Sky Will Fall
GENRE: YA Sci-Fi
Elysium meets Resident Evil as Bree and Kennon must work together to defeat a power-hungry mad scientist from the exceedingly advanced Sky Cities before his venomous mutants ravage what remains of humanity on Ground Level and destroy the few things left to love in a forgotten world.
Moon and stars, I needed to get out of the stupid Bio Sector before I palm-heel-striked the next person who asked me to slow down. I marched through the maze of wide corridors toward my dorm room, feeling like the proverbial mouse as the white-scape walls pressed in on me.
“Bryony,” a voice called from behind and I paused, cringing at my given name.
Only one person could pull off such loathing and condescension into a falsely sweet, childlike voice: Patron Alice. I forced my shoulders down from where they’d begun to creep near my ears and turned. My features settled into the familiar blank I reserved for the Patron Mothers.
“Yes?” My toneless voice conveyed none of my inner rage. I would not give them that. Not today.
Patron Alice’s slate-gray eyes appeared buggy in her full face. She clasped her chubby hands together under her ample chest like some proper lady in novels I’d scanned. Her narrow shoulders were nearly nonexistent under the layers of skin fed by bon-bons she stashed in her personal cooling unit.
Everything about her was very…round.
“I do believe you are going the wrong way.”
She sniffed, tilting her head back a notch so she appeared to be looking down at me, though we stood eye-to-eye. Her starched-into-submission smock crinkled with every movement, pleading for some give. A single, thin eyebrow curved up toward the dishwater bangs cut too short for her face as she glanced at my feet. No doubt they straddled the red line, designed to keep all the campers in their proper lanes, bisecting the pristine marble floor.
Great premise and voice. In your pitch, I'd add something about why Bree decided to save the world. What's in it for her?
ReplyDeleteMy toneless voice conveyed none of my inner rage -- in this sentence, you have a chance to show (instead of tell) the reader what her rage feels like to her and how she manages to control it.
Also, watch out for the body shaming.
She says she is going to her dorm room, not on some forbidden mission so I am not sure why she is going the wrong way, and I also get the feeling the Patron Alice is a bit of a caricature rather than a real character. I might read a bit further to see if this surprised me in any way soon.
ReplyDeleteI'm on the fence with this one. On the one hand, I thought your writing was good, but the scene itself didn't really draw me in. Perhaps it was the forced conflict between Bryony and Patron Alice, as AMY mentioned? Or it might have had something to do with the detailed descriptions. I thought they bogged down the pacing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, two lines tripped me up. You might consider changing "Only one person could pull off such loathing and condescension into a falsely sweet, childlike voice: Patron Alice" to something like "Only one person could pour loathing and condescension into such a falsely sweet voice: Patron Alice." And I'd cut the comma and one of the subordinate clauses in the last line: "No doubt they straddled the red line designed to keep all the campers in their proper lanes" or "No doubt they straddled the red line bisecting the pristine marble floor bisecting the pristine marble floor."
Good luck to you and THE SKY WILL FALL (which is a great title)!