4/5

We all do what we have to do in order to survive.

I really enjoyed this book. It is so vastly innovative, I adored everything about the world and the themes it explored. It's a brilliant ode to dystopian books like The Hunger Games, whilst still undoubtedly being its own unique story.

Slowly, we uncover the threads that make up the society of New Amsterdam. The threads that enable and direct the dreaded Gauntlet—a livestreamed game where people are encouraged to offer up a life in exchange for their debts, a game where the surgically-altered assassins hunt down and kill the sacrificial Lambs.
This is a world ravaged by the after effects of nuclear war, struggling to survive an irradiated landscape and the rising sea levels. It is a world that is drowning, and where Caerus—the corporation in charge—gets to decide who will sink and who will swim.

Caerus have offered the citizens a system in which they can spend whilst accumulating massive amounts of debt, a system that encourages them to dig themselves deeper and deeper until they have no options left. It is a system utilised to divert blame. How can it be Caerus' fault that you've spent yourself to death? How can it be their fault if you go hungry, refusing to indebt yourself? Either way, the fault cannot lie with them. It is the false appearance of a choice. And if you are the one making the decision, how can the blame be put on another? It is an incredibly clever system that is only steps removed from a reality we recognise.
When this debt builds and builds and eventually reaches its limits, there are ways to make it go away. Another false choice is presented to you. A life for a debt. A pretence given of a chance of surviving the Gauntlet, another system Caerus have expertly crafted in order to control.

Caerus choose the Lambs, the sacrificed debtors, and they choose the Angels, the merciless killers. They construct and delicately place the bricks of the narrative, and let the citizens of New Amsterdam watch as it all plays out. It's a fair chance, they say, a hunter and a hunted. But Caerus has altered their Angels to become the perfect creations, the most ruthless killing machines.

In these robes, we meet our main characters. Inesa—the Lamb, and Melinoë—the Angel.
Inesa has lived in Lower Esopus her entire life, making a living off of preserving a memory of the past in her taxidermy shop. Her brother, Luka, hunts the animals—the ones that spark comfort and remind people of the world before, the deer with only two eyes and no webbed feet—and Inesa stuffs them. Together they work for food and for warmth, desperate never to accumulate debt, fighting to survive every day in a world that would drown them. But their mother has no such qualms, she amounts more and more debt every day, and she offers up Inesa to clear it.
Melinoë is an Angel, a Caerus assassin. She has been outfitted with machine parts, enhanced to become the perfect weapon, and altered aesthetically to look exactly how they want. She was made to be remorseless, but the last time she was sent out to kill a Lamb something went wrong. The memory stuck and no amount of Caerus' Wipes could erase it. The sound of the rain, the feeling of water on her skin, all of it brings her back to that moment. The one she cannot forget. But this Gauntlet will be different, this Gauntlet she will prove herself, she won't falter and then she won't be made empty of who she is. She won't be decommissioned.

Melinoë is the hunter and Inesa is the hunted. Caerus want the audience to believe Inesa has a chance. Melinoë knows she must perform well. All Inesa wants is to survive. But there are more things out there in the wild than just the two of them. There is pain and grief, there is endless fear, but there is also hope.

He said that Caerus has created the conditions that allow some organisms to thrive and others to die. That we're land animals in a drowning world and they're sea creatures. But if the lakes and the rivers dried up and the sea level fell, we would survive, and they would die.

I adored learning everything about this world, it holds so many amazing concepts and ideas. I loved every morsel of worldbuilding we were fed, I only wished we could've seen more of it. Because of this personal preference, the beginning of the book was my favourite part as I wanted to do nothing but soak in all the different elements of this society and this dilapidating world. It was so well constructed and I hope we get to see more of it in another book, if possible!
I enjoyed watching the character's relationships as they developed, although I think I needed more time to grow properly attached to them and to the romance.

The ending is another matter. (Don't worry, no spoilers!) I'm very conflicted about how I feel about the ending and I think it might make for some quite polarising opinions. I'm at once a little underwhelmed, as I think it's a tad anticlimactic, yet I also understand the messaging behind it and entirely adore what it's trying to say.
I think it is an important thing to remember that change does not happen all at once and that even small revolutions mean something. Change is difficult and it is slow, but it is worth fighting for, over and over again. It does not take only one spark to rewrite the world as we know it, not in actuality. It starts with the smallest of revolutions, inside one person and then another. It grows and it shifts and it builds until those sparks become a flame, until each individual has felt those embers and has let it change them. There is no easy, utopian solution to our dystopia. Change is difficult and maybe we won't change the world, but it is a place to start.

But I think individuals are capable of compassion. Actually, I know they are. And maybe that's all it takes—at least in 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 think this is a very fresh and intriguing take on a subgenre that most will have experienced before. It is born of a love of fandom and of the dystopian genre, and I'm very happy to have read it. I immensely enjoyed it and I think that so many others will as well.

Thank you Del Rey for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

There would be no Gauntlet without an audience.