PW #359: Young Adult Historical Fantasy: FAMINELAND

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Names: Katie Bucklein and Megan Lally
Mentee Name: Julia Darcey
Title: FAMINELAND
Category: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Word Count: 105,000

Pitch:

In an England where World War I never ended, chemical weapons have created an army of mutant cannibals fighting to enslave humanity. Cannibal hunter Kimae is determined to defeat them with her father’s weapon: a poison that kills maneaters, and leaves humans alive. But to find it, she must unite with the one “person” who knows where her father died: the cannibal who devoured him.

Excerpt: 

Kimae fought the air.

Landing blow after blow, she battled an imaginary maneater in the narrow canyon between her bed and the wall. Sweat beaded on her skin as she struck again and again with a knife she didn’t have but remembered so well she could feel the hilt, warm in her palm. Training in secret had paid off: her jabs came as fierce and fast as they had a year ago, when they brought her here from the wilderness, barely alive.

The bonelicker fell in an arc of blood, and she stood over him, breath ragged. Muscles twitching, she cranked open the window and let the cold sea air sing over her slick skin. With the breeze came a sudden longing for the hunt, for the hush of the Blight falling in the woods, blown back by the billows of her fire. She craned her head out the window, eyeing the dull gray of the cobblestones below. Fifteen feet, perhaps. A drop she could survive.

In the Institute, she was just another orphan. Out there, she’d been a cannibal killer. After a year of hiding from revenge, it was finally time to chase it.

This time, she told herself, she’d find the cannibal who murdered her father. This time, she’d sink her father’s knife into his neck.

This time, she wouldn’t end up half-dead in a pool of her own blood.