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My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
I am querying TECHNADA, a 97,000-word adult sci-fi thriller with biohorror elements, featuring a Latina single mother who becomes the face of a “biological internet,” until the launch causes a global crisis and she is blamed as the culprit. This novel combines the spectacle-driven social critique of Chain-Gang All-Stars with the paranoia and near-future dread of The Extractionist. Couple of things. Your word count is a bit high. Yes, SF/F get more room for world building, but as a debut looking for an agent, you don't want to present any reason at all for them to consider passing. I'd try to knock 15k off. Also, the term "biological internet" definitely intrigues me, but I don't have any idea what it actually means, and therefore when you say the launch causes a global crisis, it just makes me more confused about what that would look like. Your opener has good comp titles, but I'd settle for putting less detail into this opener, and focus on getting that information into the body, not the introduction.
Exhausted single mom and freelance bounty hunter Veronica Verduzco is one missed payment from homelessness. Then a takedown goes horribly wrong when the fugitive she is chasing mutates mid-fight, and the viral footage of their battle turns Veronica into America’s newest obsession. I think we need more world building here. Is this just a normal thing in this world, for someone to mutate? And... what did they mutate into? Why would her fighting with it make her the newest obsession? I ask b/c if it's pretty common for people / things to just mutate, then it's the fight that makes her special, and I want to know what she did in this situation that was meaningful. If it's the mutation that makes it memorable (like this isn't just a normal thing in this world) then I don't understand why the focus would be on her, rather than the mutant. In general, there's just a lot of assumed knowledge here that the reader doesn't have In a 2076 California long warped by content saturation and manufactured outrage, she is memed, monetized, and recast as a hero by a public desperate for something to consume.
The attention draws healthtech mogul Jack Cygan, who offers Veronica enough money to change her daughter’s life if she will become the public face of his new neural network, a xenobot-powered system designed to link human minds. I understand this sentence, but I don't know what it actually means if that makes sense. I need an explanaion of what this actually is. Veronica knows the deal is dangerous, but she takes it anyway, believing one bad choice of her own might buy her child freedom from poverty. Launch night goes less than planned, with Cygan assassinated onstage and cannibalistic mutants erupting worldwide. Again, not understanding the mutants and how they fit into this world... also, now they're cannibals? In the ensuing chaos, his company claims the crisis can be stopped only by killing Veronica and her daughter, whose DNA has been keyed to the network’s control mechanism. Suddenly hunted by government operatives, the media, and the same public that made her famous, Veronica must uncover what Cygan built and why her child is bound to it before the world decides their deaths are an acceptable price to for a cure. I like the ending here, it puts forward what's stake, etc. But the worldbuilding needs to be more clear, as right now it's just causing me confusion. I think the premise sounds cool, but there needs to be more clarity here.
I am a final-year medical student earning my MD in May 2026, and have a master’s degree in human physiology, both of which informed the biotech/global disaster elements of TECHNADA. My short fiction has appeared in California’s Emerging Writers. Thank you for your time and consideration. Perfect bio!