Beta Reader Call | ‘The Shattering Song’

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this at all recently, but for the past six weeks or so, I have been hard at work editing my most recent book, The Shattering Song. It’s a young adult fantasy adventure, and is the sequel my debut novel The Crystal Tree. So far, editing has been going encouragingly well. I’ve been working on straightening out the plot, making sure all the pieces are in the right place and make sense, weaving all the little threads together. And finally, as you may have guessed, I am at the point where I need some more sets of eyes to look at this draft for me. My book has a pretty solid base, and a storyline that I believe in. So now, I’m putting out a call for beta readers.

What I would need from beta readers is for you to read the book and let me know what you think of it, from a reader’s perspective. You don’t need to be a writer at all. I’m not looking for grammar checks, or for people to go through it line by line to tell me where my dialogue is janky. Those are things I will be looking to fix in later drafts when I’m polishing and making things look pretty. What I need to know right now is if the plot is gripping, where it gets boring, big picture things that would bother you as a reader.

So, what is The Shattering Song about? Here is a very rough synopsis that will hopefully give you an idea of the plot:  Briar believed that reaching the Crystal Tree would be the end of the battle, but getting there was only half the fight. Now she and her friends race south, to the capital, to stop Sachio before he takes the throne he believes he deserves. But an army of children is marching on the city, wielding a strange, wild magic, and destroying everything in their path. The king grows madder every day, and Sachio seems to be the city’s last hope. With the ruling council on the verge of crowning him king, Briar and her allies have one chance to stop him, and doing so means sacrificing everything; magic, freedom, and maybe even their very lives.

I’m still working through the last part of the book, so the length is not set, but I would expect it to be around 80k words or so by the time I’m done. I am looking to send it out in the first few days of February, and would be hoping for feedback to be returned in the first week or March (or if you don’t think you’ll quite make this but are still enthusiastic, then we could discuss options via email.) Also, as I mentioned before, The Shattering Song is a sequel, and while I am attempting to write it in such a way that you would still understand it without having read the first book, I realise that that might be an issue for some people. I’d be happy to send a pdf copy of book one to anyone who needs is. (I should be able to send this to you a little in advance of The Shattering Song).

Does this sound like something you would be interested in? I hope so! I would be so grateful to anyone who could spare some time to read this book and give me their overall impressions. I will have some questions to send to anyone interested in beta reading, just so you have some sort of idea of what feedback I would find particularly useful. If this interests you, then I’ve added a handy dandy little form below to make things easier for me to keep things in order. All I need is a name and an email address. And if you need a pdf copy of The Crystal Tree to read before you jump into the sequel, you can let me know that there too.

Thank you in advance to anyone who is kind enough to lend me a hand. I value the help of anyone who can give me their opinion of my book. Writing sequels, even more than any other book, is difficult, but with some extra eyes and opinions, I’m hoping to make this book the very best that it can be. So if you can help out at all, I would love to have you on board. Please, fill in the form and I’ll email you with details, questions, copies of the books, or anything you need. Or leave a question in the comments and I’ll answer you there!