LUCHA OF THE FORGOTTEN SPRING

A girl returns home with destruction as her sole purpose—but finds hope in an unexpected place in this follow-up to 2023’s Lucha of the Night Forest.

Sixteen-year-old Lucha has been through a lot but finding her city of Robado nearly empty of life gives her a new and uncomfortable feeling. Throughout her life, she’s seen her community struggle because of the harmful influence of the “forgetting drug” Olvida; her goal now is to eradicate it and destroy the kings, the “cruel men who profited off its existence.” But that will be hard to do in a city filled with hundreds of piled-up bodies. Something terrible has happened in her absence, but it turns out that the survivors are not without leaders. Eventually Lucha finds the Syndicate, a group of rebels intent on taking Robado back from the kings, and in the process, recovering the Olvida they crave. Their goals align well enough for now, so Lucha joins the Syndicate temporarily and helps feed the Robadans. As the time when she’ll betray the Syndicate draws closer, however, she grows conflicted—her goal all along has been to destroy Olvida, but when alliances bend and break, Lucha faces new decisions. Mejia creates a rich, Latin American–coded world bolstered by entrancing prose and a compelling main character. As engrossing as the earlier volume was, this one, with its explorations of addiction, community, and home, is even more compelling.

A satisfyingly resonant and page-turning duology closer.