Inhuman

Gr 8 Up—Years ago, genetic experimentation gone wrong unleashed the Ferae virus, which killed millions and mutated more into half-human, half-animal hybrids. Humanity fled west and built a wall along the Mississippi River. Sixteen-year-old Lane McEvoy has grown up in the West, but she's just found out that her father, who she thought was an art dealer, is actually a fetch, someone who illegally crosses the quarantine line to retrieve items from the East. She's blackmailed into breaching the wall and convincing him to do a job for a powerful government official, but when she can't locate him, she must perform the fetch herself with help from mysterious border guard Everson and infuriating mercenary Rafe. This first installation in a trilogy is well imagined, set in an original world whose convincing history, politics, and social norms come out naturally as the story unfolds. The animal hybrids are sometimes intriguing and sometimes terrifying (like the half-bat half-piranha weevlings) but are always compelling. While the love triangle is perhaps inevitable, Lane, Everson, and Rafe are believable, and new facets of their personalities are revealed over their journey. Although ethics in Lane's universe are, at first, clearly delineated, as she sees more of the world past the wall, her sense of what makes people human-and humane-evolves. This is a perfectly plotted, deliciously suspenseful journey through a lush, intriguing society in which nothing is quite as it seems.—Gretchen Kolderup, New York Public Library