Thanks to everyone who voted for my query letter hook! The winner is a hybrid combination of sentences 2 and 4, with a hint of 3.
“Sixteen-year-old Flynn thinks learning about her dead parents is a dream come true—until she’s asked to live up to their legacy by leading the army to war.”
I appreciated that you guys took time to actually analyze why you liked or didn’t like each sentence. Many of you will be pleased to see that the telepathic sorcerers no longer make a cameo in this sentence. 🙂 It’s for the best–as one of my readers said, it over-simplifies who the bad guys actually are, and makes the reader think that fighting those bad guys is the book’s primary source of conflict (they are the occasion for inner conflict, which is the primary conflict).
Anyway, again, thanks for the votes. Please join me this week as I discuss my experiences agent-hunting and query-writing on this blog.
RHDavis
I just found you through tag surfing. I’m ready to embark the query phase, too. I have a partial out right now, so if she rejects it, I’ll begin the query process soon after.
Good luck.