Fable for the End of the World

Ava Reid — 2024

In post-atomic New York, one girl is selected to pay off her mother's debt by dying--or killing--in a televised Gauntlet but instead falls in love with the assassin, in this sapphic stand-alone postapocalyptic romance with a Hunger Games twist, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls and The Last of Us. Inesa has spent her whole life feeling like a land animal in a drowning world. She's grown up in a city that's sinking, after an Atomic Age claimed much of the country and left New Amsterdam amongst rising waters, buoyed only by Caerus, a company that sells everything from food to electricity, all on credit. And Inesa knows the price of going into the red, so she refuses to take on any debt. Melinoë works for Caerus, but not in their warehouse. Her job is to give the citizens of New Amsterdam hope and spectacle as a so-called Angel, by hunting and killing those who fall too deeply into debt in the televised Gauntlet. After nearly failing to complete her last mission, she has to prove her worth or she'll have her memory wiped and live the rest of her life as an empty shell, unwilling wife to some executive twice her age. When Inesa's mom secretly incurs over 500,000 credits of debt and nominates Inesa as a Lamb for the next Gauntlet, her only hope is to run--into Drowned County, the irradiated land between New Amsterdam and the Dominion of New England. With Melinoë tracking her, and mutated animals--and humans--attacking, Inesa will have to adapt or die. If she survives, Melinoë's life is over. That is, until they both end up stranded, injured, and isolated, and their only hope for survival is each other. When the cameras are off, can they become more than just an Angel and a Lamb? And what happens when they both want to do more than just survive? From Ava Reid, author of A Study in Drowning, comes a vital look at the cost of living, the many debts we incur, and the love we must fight for, all set in an eerily dark mirror of our own world.

Reviews

Catherine@catrewritten

Jan 12, 2025

“You can hate the person who imprisons you, but you can’t hate the person who sets you free. So what do you do when they’re one and the same?”

⭐️⭐️

Fable for the End of the World is Ava Reid’s first foray into dystopian, YA romance. Heavily inspired by The Hunger Games, the story centers around Inesa, a teenage taxidermist who lives in a frequently underwater, impoverished town, and Melinoë, a genetically and surgically modified angel of death who’s been trained to kill the unfortunates chosen for the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

The gauntlet is a televised hunt where an “Angel” is sent to kill a sponsored “Lamb” for the viewing pleasure of the masses. “Lambs” are most often offered up by family members who have accumulated debt past the allowed threshold with the ruling corporation, Caerus, which controls all aspects of life.

When the hunt goes awry thanks to forest cannibals, good ole’ fashioned PTSD, and a rifle-savvy younger brother, Inesa and Melinöe are forced to rely on one another to survive.

But every moment they spend together allows for doubt to seed and sprout, rooting out fearful assumption and mistrust, making room for something tentatively hopeful to bloom.

~*~

To begin the review, let’s discuss the positives.

The premise of this book was interesting, if not very original or imaginative. Reid is a very technically sound writer with adaptive prose and a talent for keeping your attention. So, no issues with the baseline of storytelling here.

I also very much enjoyed the romance between both of these girls. It came off a little rushed, but that’s the nature of a standalone. Overall, watching them puzzle out one another’s feelings, as well as their own, was sweet to read.

Melinoë's chapters were especially compelling. Her pursuit to understand herself and her purpose was what kept me turning pages even when other aspects of the story made me falter.

Luca was a standout character to me, as well. A fierce younger brother, with a hidden, tender heart. His determination in the face of insurmountable odds made it easy to root for him.

On to the, unfortunately, numerous negatives.

Reid tried to fit a lot of social commentary into this one book. You’ve got corporate greed, global warming, the pitfalls of artificial intelligence and the ways it’s being used concerning pornography, society’s collective decline of empathy, female exploitation and abuse…and that’s just too much for this storyline to handle adequately.

I was left feeling like I was being spoon-fed little mouthfuls of something profound, only for the book to end and for me to find myself still hungry.

In that same vein, Reid doesn’t allow for much subtlety, if any, in regards to those aforementioned issues. The characters all but clobber you over the head with “the point.” I very much miss the time when author’s allowed us to, instead, infer meaning from the text.

Another big issue for me was Inesa’s characterization. I believe she was meant to be a softer, more relatable character, but instead she comes off as weak and utterly inept at preserving her own life. She’s cursed with so much empathy and guilt that she quite literally almost gets her face eaten off by a cannibal because she can’t bring herself to use lethal force. This lack of action (and courage), also nearly gets her brother killed—which is something unforgivable to me, as an older sister myself.

Inesa seems to view the world as black or white and is unable to conceptualize a very real grey area where all living, thinking things exist. It’s almost as if Reid was trying to say that survival isn’t as important as being unfailing kind and selfless, and while that works in fiction, it doesn’t translate well here into reality.

(Potentially mild spoilers below, please tread carefully.)

Lastly, this story never comes to any conclusion on any issue or struggle that comes up within it. None of the characters succeed in what they set out to do. Nothing is resolved. This in itself, doesn’t bother me. I read The Poppy War trilogy (if you know, you know), and am a firm believer that not all stories need a happily-ever-after to be worthwhile.

However, the fact that there’s not even a mildly hopeful open-ending, or at least one character that I felt learned something significant, sat wrong with me. Nothing that happened to these characters was leading up to any real change or realization; it was just an exercise in futility.

Rating Explanation: Two stars for Reid’s superior writing form as well as for Melinoë’s compelling characterization.

(Thank you sincerely to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishing for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.)