FABLE FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

A 17-year-old girl leading a hardscrabble existence in a post-apocalyptic society controlled by the all-encompassing corporation Caerus fights to survive.

Inesa Yael Soulis lives with her younger brother, Luka, and their cruel mother in the waterlogged Lower Esopus neighborhood. While Inesa is working at the family taxidermy shop, which she runs with Luka, a Mask—a Caerus employee—walks in and announces that their mother nominated Inesa for the Lamb’s Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is a livestreamed challenge in which Angels, or lab-modified humans, hunt and kill Lambs to pay off citizens’ debts. Shortly before the competition is due to begin, Inesa and Luka go on the run. Meanwhile, Melinoë, one of the Angels engineered to be killing machines (who are “just human enough to feel”), is glitching. Painful memories seep through even as she sets forth to nab her Lamb before she can escape. As Inesa and Melinoë battle, a connection sparks, blurring the lines between hunter and hunted. In this brilliantly imagined work, the impoverished are terrorized not only by the environment but by the government, and women’s bodies are morphed and mutated to men’s ideals. This masterful queer narrative encourages readers to question messages around gender and sexuality as humanity triumphs through persistence, acts of rebellion, and small victories against the backdrop of a dark and damning setting with worldbuilding that doesn’t disappoint. Most characters present white.

A thrilling, page-turning must-read: prescient and necessary, impressive and disturbing.