Thread: Looking for a Query Critique

I've worked on my query for a while now and I think I've got a decent draft down, though I also think I need a few more eyes on it. I'll appreciate any feedback given. Thanks in advance.
______________________________________________

Marcus is built in the final year of the last golden age. He is intended to be a companion android, but in a world of increasing android violence, that purpose changes when social stigma forces his first owner to abandon him and violence ends the life of his second.

With nowhere to go, Marcus is captured and sold as a labor android to the undercity. There amidst the decrepit castaways of the modern world, the crime lords eventually give him a gift – freedom – but at a price no functioning android can pay. So they break him. They erase the safeguards that the manufacturer installed and speak one final order which will set him free upon completion. All it takes is one dead human to unburden Marcus from obligation, allowing him to disregard any command but his own. But just as he thinks he can leave the undercity and live his life, the buildings being to fall around him.

Going from the slums and into a decimated, barren world is a mere blink to the android. He learns that the violence in decades prior became cataclysms, turning the great megacities into ruins in humanity’s final decades. The military finds him, repairs him, and wants him to fight for the protection of the American Commonwealth’s dwindling resources. But they don’t know Marcus free. He doesn’t have to follow their orders, however he knows he cannot resist them, yet. For now he must obey and survive while waiting for the day when he can escape and finally be free.

Originally Posted by Man From Mars

______________________________________________

Marcus is built in the final year of the last golden age. He is intended to be a companion android, but in a world of increasing android violence, that purpose changes when social stigma forces his first owner to abandon him and violence ends the life of his second.

With nowhere to go, Marcus is captured and sold as a labor android to the undercity. There amidst the decrepit castaways of the modern world, the crime lords eventually give him a gift – freedom – but at a price no functioning android can pay. So they break him. They erase the safeguards that the manufacturer installed and speak one final order which will set him free upon completion. All it takes is one dead human to unburden Marcus from obligation, allowing him to disregard any command but his own. But just as he thinks he can leave the undercity and live his life, the buildings being to fall around him.

Going from the slums and into a decimated, barren world is a mere blink to the android. He learns that the violence in decades prior became cataclysms, turning the great megacities into ruins in humanity’s final decades. The military finds him, repairs him, and wants him to fight for the protection of the American Commonwealth’s dwindling resources. But they don’t know Marcus free. He doesn’t have to follow their orders, however he knows he cannot resist them, yet. For now he must obey and survive while waiting for the day when he can escape and finally be free.

Marsman,

It reads more like a synopsis than a query. Android goes here and does this, android goes there and does that. The query is not a description of the story, but a hook. If I were an agent or editor, I'd think this writer can't come up with a concise, catchy way of telling what the book is about. I'd advise googling query letters and reading a few that got requests. I underlined a couple of typos for you.

Take care,

JohnB

John,

Thank you for taking time to critique my query. I'll go back and rewrite it again and maybe post it back here when it's... well, "done" is not the right word...

Second Submission (draft number... man I can't even keep count at this point @.@):

The calamities took Marcus from the glittering megacities of the last golden age into the final epoch of human history. Before the disasters, the undercity crime lords gave him something few androids possessed: the ability to choose. However achieving true freedom would require surviving the radioactive winds, perpetual clouds, and all-encompassing toxic haze of the decimated Earth.

It was only after Marcus escaped the resource wars, after the last cities decayed, and after the human exodus left him behind that he found true peace and independence. With the remnants of the human’s technology, Marcus and his android companions sculpted a new world, creating a city for themselves and their future.

But when the others stop building, Marcus learns that the ability to choose and the freedom that he had earned are missing from their synthetic minds. If they are to have a future, then he must find a way to free his friends of their programming, but the tide of malfunctions is increasing by the day, and he can’t do it alone.