Fable by Adrienne Young

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Title: Fable
Author: Adrienne Young
Published by: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: September 1, 2020
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Emma Lysy
Length: 8 hours and 51 minutes
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Action and Adventure
Source: Libby, NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2021 Audiobook Challenge, Lenoreo's 2021 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ IndieBound ✩ iTunes ✩ Libro.FM
My rating:

Blurb:

Welcome to a world made dangerous by the sea and by those who wish to profit from it. Where a young girl must find her place and her family while trying to survive in a world built for men.

As the daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows, the sea is the only home seventeen-year-old Fable has ever known. It’s been four years since the night she watched her mother drown during an unforgiving storm. The next day her father abandoned her on a legendary island filled with thieves and little food. To survive she must keep to herself, learn to trust no one and rely on the unique skills her mother taught her. The only thing that keeps her going is the goal of getting off the island, finding her father and demanding her rightful place beside him and his crew. To do so Fable enlists the help of a young trader named West to get her off the island and across the Narrows to her father.
But her father’s rivalries and the dangers of his trading enterprise have only multiplied since she last saw him and Fable soon finds that West isn't who he seems. Together, they will have to survive more than the treacherous storms that haunt the Narrows if they're going to stay alive.

My Review:

4 stars — Every time I read a book by this author, I’m always taken to a world completely unlike anything I was expecting…and not only that, but unlike anything I usually read.  I tagged this as pirates, but pirates are never referred to in the book.  But it was the closest thing I could describe the traders to, and the adventures that occur on the sea.

Let’s talk about the narrator for a second.  In general I really enjoyed her.  She was pretty consistent, great pacing and emotion.  I occasionally wanted more distinct voices for some of the secondary characters, most particularly West.  It’s funny, b/c she would have good voices for background male characters, but West, Paj and Auster were only mildly distinctive.  She also has a strange quality to her voice — it’s not a lisp per say, but just something to it.  I worried it might bother me, but in the end I really loved her voice as Fable.  There was a daring quality to it — like you could imagine this teenaged Fable fighting for what she deserves.  I will definitely be looking forward to hearing her voice the sequel as well.

Fable was…just so many things wrapped up into one package.  She was terribly naïve in some ways, but worldly wise in others.  We really get an accurate picture of the terrible struggles she was facing on Jeval.  Like, dude — harsh.  It really sets the tone for the book, b/c there are a lot of charged moments where morally questionable decisions are made…but they make sense in the context of the world they live in.  I truly felt for how desperately she longed for a family to belong to, and I admired how hard she worked to prove her worth.

The crew was interesting.  I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what they were about, but once you found out it made total sense (and my reading buddy totally called it).  They were all really interesting characters that added to the dimension of the Marigold.  None perfect, all with flaws — all with burdens to their names.  They were misfits, but it was more than just that.

I wanted a bit more from West, but I did enjoy what I got with him at the same time.  I just hope I get more and more in the sequel.

I still have so many questions!  There are bits about the world that I’m not sure I quite grasp.  I honestly don’t have a lot of theories about where the story is going to go.  But I’m excited to see how things end up for our peeps.

I kind of enjoyed that there was very little by way of “magic” in the story…it felt real that way.  But at the same time, I loved the little bits of gem sage stuff we got.

So yeah.  Thoroughly entertaining, has my mind just whirring with the possibilities.

COYER Community: I buddy read this one with Lillian from Mom With a Reading Problem, and it was so great to check in with theories here and there (mostly hers), and then talk about the ending.  She also rated it 4 stars (read her review here — though note that she reviews both books, so don’t scroll down if you don’t want the sequel’s review).  While I won’t be able to buddy read the sequel with her, I know we’ll be talking about it when I finally get to it.