[FANTASY] Flesh and Spirit

Title
Flesh and Spirit

Length, Draft and Language
50k, 1st draft, English

Brief Summary
[Very quick world-building background:] All people have magic within them, but they must Sacrifice their bodies to become spirits capable of wielding the magic. A spirit requires donations of psychic energy from "flesh" (regular, non-spirit, people) to continue existing and using magic. If too much energy is taken, the drained person becomes a Shadow -- an empty husk of a person.

While training as a priestess, Izelle investigates the cause of why Shadows have been increasing recently. She uncovers a plot to take over the High Council and rule the territory. She also discovers that she is a forbidden half-spirit, able to control magic while still corporeal. Should she be found out, she will be executed.

She must keep her abilities secret while trying to disrupt the plot (of the antagonist, not my writing! hrmph).

Sub Genre & Keywords
fantasy, magic, power struggle

Known Issues
The major issues: Characterization and descriptive prose are almost non-existent. It reads more like a 50k-word outline, as some key scenes are rendered as "[INSERT SCENE]" notes. :( Later, I plan to spend significant some time building out much more detailed character bios, maps of the city, national history, etc, to seriously flesh things out and bring them to life in ways that are quite lacking now.

A minor point: I started out in 3rd person limited following the two MCs, but ended up 3rd person omniscient.

Critique Requested
I like my overall plot; what do you think? What could be made stronger about the plot? Which subplots should be expanded vs cut? Are there ways to integrate characters' storylines that I overlooked? What plot holes have I totally overlooked? :)

What POV works best? I switched to omniscient because there were scenes I wanted to describe that neither MC could know about.

I could definitely use suggestions for better fantasy terms for things like "energy" (which is the source of magic), etc.

Don't worry about grammar; I can edit mechanics myself. You can probably ignore tone too, since that could drastically change once I address the known weaknesses of characterization and description.

Critique Tolerance
I know that my writing is weak in many ways. Even so, I would appreciate gentle criticism. I'm thinking my NaNo story is "unengagingly written but has potential." If you think there's nothing at all to salvage, please be very gentle in bursting my bubble. :(

If you think it at least has potential, though, then do share what needs fixing before it can actually be readable by non-Wrimos. :)

Experience & Goals
This is my first novel. Worse, I haven't written fiction since ~6 years ago; turns out, my fiction-writing muscles have atrophied! :( That said, I do want to improve my fiction-writing skills again. I will be reading all the writing books in the bookstore that I didn't have time to read during November. Publishing is probably just a pipe dream, but maybe it could readable by friends and family with enough polish & fixing...

Method of Communication
I like email; I'm open to other methods, if you prefer. I'm using Google Docs for my story, so you can make comments directly into the document. (If you would prefer a different format for reading or making notes, though, let me know. I'm flexible!)

Anything else?
The writing is PG-13, maybe even PG; nothing's graphic. Although when I add in the romance subplot that failed to write itself during November, it won't be PG anymore. :P

I have no deadlines, so turnaround time is flexible.

Thanks!
Arthaey
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