A review by luckyonesoph
Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid

challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

“And maybe that’s all it takes—at least at the beginning. Just a few people who care. And that caring matters, even if it can’t cool the earth or lower sea levels or turn back time to before a nuclear blast.”

I have such complicated feelings about this book. Fable for the End of the World was one of my top 3 most anticipated reads of 2025; I wanted it in my hands so badly from the second it was announced. I begged for an arc on every platform, entered every instagram and book festival giveaway, and when those efforts failed, I pre-ordered both the e-book and the audiobook so I could drop everything and read it the second it came out at midnight on march 4th. And to give the book credit where credit is due, I was hooked from the first page. I read it in one sitting, pausing only to catch my breath and yell about the drama of it all in my reader groupchats, and was completely hooked throughout.

Unfortunately, there were just too many glaring issues for me to completely fall in love with this world and these characters, and the more distance I get from it, the more it pisses me off.

Unorganized, slightly incoherent complaints below:

• I knew this was inspired by the hunger games, but "inspired" is doing some heavy lifting here. It's impossible to separate the two because the similarities are so, so glaring. If Ava Reid hadn't openly admitted to writing this as an ode to that era of dystopian YA, she'd be cancelled on booktok for plagiarism a la Lauren Roberts for Powerless. It's just too hard to respect the reverence when this is so shallow in comparison to the source material. 
• There was almost too much social commentary going on for any of it to really hit. Yes, capitalism and social stratification and ecological collapse and misogyny and the dominance of the tech industry and the tyranny of the medical system are all intertwined, but none of it was really followed to its logical end. Everything is underwater and flooding but you still have constant electricity and access to tablets? Evolution has begun to change the wildlife in response to climate collapse but not the humans? And so much more. 
• On a related note, the whole plotline about Inesa's mom being a medical malingerer was..... a choice. Yes, the medical system takes advantage of people and throws them into massive amounts of debt. No, I don't think the notion of a woman faking her illnesses is subversive in any way. Whatever impact Ava Reid was going for there, she failed. So many opportunities to explore disability in a realistic way (
  HELLO YOU ALTER A GIRLS BODY AND TURN HER INTO A semi-ROBOT AND TREAT HER FOR SEVERE PTSD. DO SOMETHING WITH THAT.
  ) and she capitalized on none of them. Super disappointing, honestly. 
• This was DARK. A lot darker than I was anticipating, even for an Ava Reid work, and especially for a YA novel. And yet, that darkness just did not resonate for some reason. I felt so detached from it all, almost like a video game. I was horrified, but in a very passive way. As soon as the scene ended, I was able to move on - which is completely different from how I've felt reading other bleak dystopias. Maybe that was the point? I'm not sure it was effective. I can't really pinpoint why. 
• The ending sucked. Genuinely what was that? So anti-climactic and completely unresolved. 
• So many threads were left unresolved. Atrocious ending aside,
  What happened to Inesa and Luka's father? What happened to Luka? The specific Gauntlet was the most watched in history, but did anything come of it?
  I understand that the unshakeably bleak future is probably Ava Reid's point, so then why introduce all these threads of hope without seeing them through til the end? It's not that the hope is quashed - that would have been more satisfying - it's that you get no answers AT ALL. 
• The prose in this was so bleak and so basic. The intent, probably, but very un-characteristic of Ava Reid and I was not a fan. 
• The romance came out of left field and while I did buy into it at the end, I did so by hand-waiving over a lot of details. Fake it till you make it and all that. 
• The ending is very clearly leaving room for a sequel while concluding just enough to pass as a standalone - the exact same way A Study in Drowning did. Annoying because of how unresolved this story felt. And if it doesn't get a sequel, then
  the only one of Ava Reid's couples to not get a happy ending is the sapphic one.
  lol. I saw a goodreads review that said "
  bury your gays but its ~feminist~ hunger games fanfiction
  " and like yeah exactly lmao. really frustrating. 

I could probably keep going but I think I hit all of the salient points. It was underdeveloped, and shallow, and read like Hunger Games fanfiction written by a teenager who discovered class consciousness last night on tiktok. 

The three things I did like:

1. Inesa's total commitment to remaining hopeful and compassionate and kind. The world needs more of that. 
2. Luka.
3. The Wends
   . What a creative idea, and a brilliant allegory. 

Sigh. That's not a very long list. I want to love Ava Reid so badly because I LOVED A Study in Drowning, but I'm losing hope. I had a hard enough time putting the atrocity that was Lady Macbeth behind me. 2.75 is my go-to rating for books with a lot of potential that I wanted to love, but that ended up just pissing me off instead, so there you go.