Sad news today. My agent doesn't like the book and isn't interested in the series.
This is always a hard part of the process. You pour your heart into something again and again, and again and again you're told that there's no space for your work.
Don't what I'm going to do with this novel, or the series I'd built around it. It might be that I don't have the right advocate for my work. It might also be me.
No big decisions right now.
Just going to try not to catastrophize.
And shouldn't an agent be giving you more specific and helpful feedback about why they don't "like" it?
I genuinely don't think she understood what the work was trying to do. She didn't "like" my Thucydides character, and suggested changing him from a character whose whole journey is narrating history in a way that changes *him*, to a character who confidently tells the story of the war without any internal change.
She also didn't understand the other half, which explores a society caught in the middle, trying not to be consumed by nationalist fervour. She wanted more action all around.
Ah, sounds like she likes the sort of science fiction I don't like. Less personal tranformation, less cultural characterization, and more "Pew! Pew!" :)
I suppose she's right about the mainstream market, but I believe you also have an audience out there.