An Inheritance of Ashes

This superb fantasy takes place in a grim world that readers will come to recognize as a future North America. Reasons for society’s collapse aren’t given, but civilization is at a roughly 19th-century level. Guns are considered relics, but no one thinks twice about having Hmong neighbors. Months ago 16-year-old Hallie’s brother-in-law, Thom, marched away from the farm she co-owns with her sister, Marthe, to fight the Wicked God Southward, an entity that traveled through a rent in the universe and, accompanied by its Twisted Things, was turning their world to ash. The ragtag human army defeated the Wicked God, but Thom, like many others, did not return; those who did have been badly damaged. When Hallie finds another Twisted Thing on the farm, the horror seems ready to return. Bobet (Above) is an accomplished stylist (a survivor of the war “carried the distance between us, five feet back and steady, like the borders of a whole universe”), and she insightfully examines the corrosive dangers of sibling rivalry in a story filled with impossible choices and unknowable ambiguities. Ages 12–up. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Associates. (Oct.)