Fable for the End of the World

I borrowed Ava Reid’s Fable for the End of the World before the prompts for my friend's reading challenge had been given so I was fortunate that it satisfied 'Read a book set in a dystopian future'

Because a dystopic future it is, where earth has all but succumbed to the ravages of climate change, Inesa and her younger brother Luka run a taxidermy shop to eke out a meager living in Esopus, the half-sunken village in which rainwater runs so high, they travel by raft from their shop to their home. Everyone in these marginal spaces outside the city (read the capital in Hunger games speak) are forced to choose between essentials such as food or electricity, or else they have to incur debt. Even saying “thank you” is a practice that has faded away because to be in debt of any sort is something that these people cannot endure. Should you fall too far into debt, the masked collectors come knocking, and they don’t just want money repaid. Unbeknownst to Inesa, her mother has accrued an enormous debt as she seeks to escape from the life she believes she is trapped in. When the Masks TM come, they come for Inesa, and it is revealed that her mother has put her up for the Lamb’s Gauntlet, the livestreamed spectacle in which the debtor is forced to flee from an assassin whose one mission is to kill the debtor: the lamb. Thrust into a race to escape death, Inesa finds herself relying on the survival skills taught by years of living in the irradiated wastes of her homeland and the help of her hunter brother, whose skill with a rifle might be the only thing standing between her and the rapidly closing assassin, Melinoë.

Mel has been trained and modified to be the ultimate living weapon. After undergoing mental calibration and physical alterations, she has been honed into a creature whose one purpose is to track and kill the sacrificial lambs in the Gauntlet. However, despite being known for her cold, ruthless nature, Mel is desperate for redemption in this Gauntlet, as her most recent hunt resulted in her breaking down for all the world to see on their screens and now haunts her with crippling flashbacks.

As Mel chases Inesa through the dangerous forests, heading North toward her believed potential salvation, both girls realize that they may not be all that different, and that the systems that have pitted them against each other might be worth fighting back against. A contemporary projection of today’s heavy-hitting topics, from climate change and capitalism to fascism and exploitation, all the while exploring what it is to be human, to hope, to sacrifice and to love.

The narrative takes the televised-competition-to-the-death premise of The Hunger Games and infuses it with even more modern context and triggers, all the while centering on a queer romance and exploring themes of love, humanity, self-worth and what it means to truly live in a world forcing you to only focus on survival.

The Author succeeds in making a story about each of these girls, rooting for them as they take on the system that rules over their world, not so different from our own. I found it a moving examination of what life and love can be when we are forced into instinctual survival, versus what can thrive when we not only survive, but attempt to truly live.

I fear the ending may leave some unsatisfied I found it an enduring testament to hope, however be warned the story doesn't conclude with a victory over the evils of capitalism.