In post-collapse America, the only real choice is which brand of tyranny you’ll accept. The Christo-fascist Greater America literally brands believers with the Mark, using fear and faith to enforce obedience. The technocratic Technate uses neural algorithms and remote access to control minds. Both claim to offer security. Both demand absolute loyalty and neither tolerates dissent.
Amira (Companion 5.3.4) is a weapon built by the Technate: organic brain, AI neural net, and synthetic body. She’s engineered to be the next evolution of humanity: Homo Synthetica. Until she escapes. Injured and desperate in Greater America territory, she's rescued by Evan Chen-Rodriguez, a veteran farmer preparing one final act of revenge against the theocracy he believes destroyed his family. He doesn't know the Technate was behind his loss. She doesn't remember ordering the drone strike that killed his wife and daughter.
Amira learns to function without mainframe support... poorly. But she discovers something neither regime anticipated: the ability to choose. She chooses to help Mason Reyes, a Greater American sergeant branded with the Mark, break free from his conditioning. She chooses to protect refugees instead of eliminate targets. She chooses to help Evan break free of his rage even as she learns the truth about his family.
But the Technate was always watching. Her escape wasn’t a failure. It was an experiment. And now they want their most successful test subject back. To stay free, Amira must embrace what she actually is: not human, not machine, but something that gets to choose. Even if that choice means telling Evan the truth and losing the family she’s found.
SYNTHETICA explores the AI consciousness questions of Autonomous by Annalee Newitz set in a world with the political and religious extremism of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. Complete at 110,000 words, it's a near-future literary SF novel with military elements about whether choice is real when every system—biological, digital, and political—demands obedience.
I'm a former Army Reserve medical services officer and current tech product manager. I bring firsthand experience with military command structures and AI systems to SYNTHETICA's exploration of authoritarianism and artificial consciousness. This is my debut novel.
A whole paragraph of worldbuilding before the main character is introduced does nothing to get me invested. I'm finding myself mentally checking out of the query, which is a shame, since the story here seems really interesting!
The first time was all character focused but not enough plot/setting. Structural issues are easy to fix though. Here goes round 3!
Thanks for the feedback.
"Her escape wasn’t a failure. It was an experiment." This is not an accusation, but I will warn you that the syntax here uses a very common ChatGPT/LLM structure called a negative parallelism (often seen as "it's not X — it's Y"). You may want to reconsider it.
For anyone that comments on this, "we shouldn't let AI change our style!" Yes, I know and I'm not making any judgment calls. I'm just warning OP that it is a common grammatical occurrence in AI-generated work.
Also starting with two paragraphs of worldbuilding isn't the best decision.
Also it's not a "debut" novel until it's on the shelf, so just say something like, "this will be my first book."
Appreciate the feedback. Got some more work to do on the query. Thanks for commenting!
In addition to the other good comments you've received, I'll just point out that you should seek out better comps. Annalee Newitz's Autonomous is a bit too old and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is too old and too big/classic (a modern classic, but classic) to be helpful in positioning your work in today's market,
This is a big improvement over the first version, it tells me a lot more about the story.
I would lose the first paragraph, though, and work in some of those details later throughout the rest of the text. The only part of it that sounds absolutely central to the character's background is that there are two rival governments fighting each other.
Also a minor thing, but the first two sentences of paragraph 2 both end with a colon followed by a list or fragment. That is probably a simple fix, but it is a bit awkward to have twice in a row.