WorldEnd: What Do You Do At the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us? – Akira Kareno

Impressive. The pieces are generic genre, but they are used to form a story that is so much more than the sum of those parts.

Half a millennium ago Humanity dominated the world, much as we dominate ours. There were other intelligent species - Elves, Dragons, Troll, et numerous cetera - but they were endangered species occupying diminishing habitats. Sounds familiar. Then Humanity was destroyed, almost overnight. The other races survive, living on flying islands. (We are not told how they survived or how the islands came to be.)

Nobody lives on the surface, because it is still occupied by the creatures that destroyed the Humans. Those creatures sometimes attack the islands, and the islands only survive because they have developed a dubious defense: They … make? let’s say make, for now … a breed of Human-looking girls (we’re told they’re faeries) who have the ability to fend off the creatures. This tends to expend the girls doing the fending. Yes, the book is that dark, and no, the people doing this are not bad guys and do not have good answers.

Willem is the last Human - recently woken from a petrified sleep - and he finds himself in a position to help care for the girls. Willem himself is damaged, physically and emotionally. But the girls’ situation resonates with Willem’s situation five hundred years earlier, and he tries to help.

It’s a short opening novel. We meet Willem, we meet the girls, and Willem starts helping them. It’s a powerful opening novel. The situation isn’t simple, the supporting characters aren’t simple, the plot isn’t simple. But it’s a real story, not a wish-fulfillment fantasy, and it touches the reader.