Review Detail

Fable for the End of the World is a true nod to the dystopian romance novels I grew up reading. It echoes Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and The Last of Us. In this fascinating dystopian world, Inesa lives with her family in the poorest part of the world, and participation in the lamb guantlet is mandatory. When Inesa is chosen, she has to survive and not be killed by a trained assassin angel sent out by Caerrus, who controls everything. Melinoe is her angel; like all angels, she is extremely pretty and ruthless. And as a dystopia, the best dystopian stories make you look at their pages and say, “wow, that’s bleak,” and then look up at the world around you, and you cringe as you see some of those things in reality. Taking the things we can already see happening all around us and pushing them to extremes, Fable shows us a young woman who routinely travels through her town by rowing a boat up and down flooded streets and the literal geographic inequality it creates between those who can afford to live upstream of the flooding and those who can’t in a world ravaged by climate change; another who is groomed and hand-crafted to the level of perfection demanded by the ruling class, and yet whose biggest flaw remains that despite this she is still human; a corporation headed by the wealthiest people in the world that is so all-consuming and all-controlling you’re not quite sure what counts as corporation and what counts as government; a society so transactional that it is seen as a kindness to ignore our neighbors in need of help, lest they become indebted to us. Buried in this dystopian novel, the gauntlet is the story's heart, and Inesa is desperate to escape the angel Melione, who is on her trail. Her brother is on the run with her, and they are heading north towards hope. Melione and Inesa's relationship is strained, but it becomes so much more as the overpowering theme of hope and love can help you survive even the most extreme situations.