Fable for the End of the World
by Ava Reid
High School    Harper/HarperCollins    384 pp.
3/25    9780063211551    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780063211575    $9.99

In a future dystopian world where the animals are mutating and the water is rising, Inesa, seventeen, works to stay debt-free from the massive corporation Caerus, which sells poor people the necessities of life on credit—up to a point. Rack up too much debt and your life, or a family member’s, is forfeit to the livestreamed Gauntlet, in which the victim, styled a Lamb, is hunted and executed by a beautiful, cybernetically enhanced Angel. Narration alternates between Inesa and Melinoë, one of those Angels, whose “disastrous” last kill haunts her. When Inesa’s mother hits her credit limit and “sponsors” Inesa for the Gauntlet, the hunt becomes Melinoë’s chance to redeem herself. Initial parallels to The Hunger Games (rev. 9/08) give way as Reid charts her own path. Reid arranges her episodes so deftly and rounds out her characters so fully that this unlikely example of the enemies-to-lovers trope remains believable. Like many a good work of sci-fi, this one holds a mirror up to our culture, including the commodification of personal data and destruction of privacy rights, but it’s the human moments—Inesa grappling with her mother’s hurtful choices; Melinoë fighting for her humanity in a system designed to strip it away—that will stay with readers after the book is closed.

From the ">May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.