Published By: Del Rey
Pages: 384
Released On: 04/03/2025
By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.
Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.
Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.
When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs—the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.
For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.
As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing. And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I’m a bit conflicted here. Because it’s a young adult book and so I feel I should be reviewing it from that perspective, however I am not in the YA category anymore and so can only review it as me.
What I will start with is saying that a new Ava Reid book day is always a good day. But I did have some issues with this.
Somehow she has managed to combine a futuristic situation with what feels, at times, to be an ancient setting, and yet neither feel out of place. It’s sewn together so well.
It always worries me when a book that is meant to be dystopian actually doesn’t feel all that far off to being real, and there’s definitely elements from this that are worrying.
I believe this is Ava’s first foray into the world of YA and it didn’t quite hit the highs I was expecting, but still enjoyable.
I found it hard to connect with the main character of Inesa. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with her, but she didn’t leap off the page. For me, she sort of just sat on the page blending in with the other characters which made it quite flat at times. The foil to her is Melinoë, who again I didn’t really gel with. None of the characters are overly absorbing sadly. I also felt the romantic angle was a bit forced. Sometimes it was okay, and at times I felt it was quite well developed for a YA novel, but for me it just didn’t natural and more just felt like she had to have a romance in it even if it didn’t fit.
This is a book I’ve had on my personal wishlist for ages, but in hindsight I probably wouldn’t have wanted to spend my money on it. I’m glad I’ve read it. Ava is a unique writer and there were some really good bits and overall it was enjoyable, but just falling short of what I was expecting. It had promise. The opening was good and really set the story up, but around about 20% it started getting too convoluted but flat at the same time, and I just didn’t really feel all that much of anything towards the rest of it.
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