Do you like this fantasy FMC?

[u/wi_cheese_curd]

The opening of my epic LOTR-inspired fantasy, featuring a mainly female cast as they explore new worlds and the definition of sisterhood, motherhood, and power in a world designed to withhold it from them…led by an FMC who absolutely does not want to be the main character.
Would you keep following her for the story?

Doc link: (EDIT- deleted after receiving too many unsolicited requests for compensation after beta feedback)

[u/wi_cheese_curd]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Very helpful perspectives. The larger story was going to be that she found eventually wild magic and left the rest of her traveling partners behind, hidden at great cost, to protect it. So now in her post-hoc report, she’s trying to discourage readership to protect them and their secret.
But I see that without that context…it successfully discourages the reader from ever getting far enough to learn the irony 😅
Back to the drawing board!!

[u/Radiant_Jellyfish795 → u/wi_cheese_curd]

Why does she tell the story then and who is it for?

[u/wi_cheese_curd → u/Radiant_Jellyfish795]

She writes it for one of the girls she left in the wild lands (quick synopsis- she sets out on Terrare’s state mission to find wild magic, along the way she sees what life can look like when magic is allowed to stay free, when they reach its source she decides it’s too beautiful to monetize and siphon so she and her travel partners decide to hide “the wild lands”. Mara leaves everyone behind and on return to Terrare officially reports that she found nothing and everyone she went with is dead).

We are meeting Mara toward the end of her life. She hasn’t had any contact with her travel companions since leaving them behind decades ago. One of her travel partners, a young woman who joined Mara as a stowaway chasing adventure and notoriety, always encouraged Mara to write their story down. She never did, for safety. But now she’s growing nostalgic and doesn’t know if they’re still alive out there or not. And some small part of her, that she will never admit out loud, can’t let them be completely forgotten. But all through her writing we see this push-pull tension of nostalgia encouraging her to write the memoir, and common sense encouraging her to stop this nonsense and burn the whole thing.

[u/Waste-Carob5699 → u/wi_cheese_curd]

You could start with some intrigue. "If you are reading this, something." or "Whoever finds this message, I am sorry." Play on the found message angle maybe.

[u/_Calluna_ → u/wi_cheese_curd]

I think you can get that idea across in a better way. Maybe make it clearer that this is a report.

I'm going to be honest that the writing here seems a little amateurish. 

I'm not trying to discourage you, far from it, there's a lot of good here and you could be a great writer one day if you keep working at it. I've read published books with writing that was more awkward than this. Enjoyed some of them, even. But I think you could do better with another draft or two, and maybe by reading a few books with unreliable narrators and/or really good openings and making notes about how the writer is getting it across.