Fable for the End of the World

Gr 10 Up–In an irradiated New York, where a Hunger Games–esque event occurs year-round as a livestream called the Gauntlet, the ruling megacorporation Caerus pits debtors against their powerful Angels. Angels are girls who have been sliced apart by Caerus and put back together: a beautiful face covering titanium bones, a prosthetic eye that can track any target, years of training to be the perfect hunters. Anyone owing more than 500,000 credits can be chosen for the Gauntlet—or offer a child in their place. Inesa and her brother work hard to never let their accounts go red, despite living in poverty in Esopus Creek. Their abusive mother doesn’t have their restraint and puts Inesa up for the Gauntlet rather than pay her debts. Melinoë, an Angel determined to redeem herself after a botched Gauntlet, is sent after her a few hours later into the Catskills. The enemies-to-lovers story does not qualify as a romance by genre standards, but the ending sparks enough hope to anchor it. The brutal reality of the heroines may be bleak for younger teens. Reid is well regarded for her lyrical writing and nuanced characters; here she paints a vivid portrait of a world fallen to climate change and capitalism, juxtaposed against the ways love is redemptive. Inesa’s family is ancestrally Jewish, Melinoë is white. Content warnings for institutionalized rape, nonconsensual voyeurism, and brainwashing.