(Kindle edition is free right now!)
Genre(s): YA / Fantasy / Post-Apocalyptic / Coming of Age / Allegory
139 pages on Kindle
Heartkeeper is a novella set in the post-apocalyptic future, where the world population has dwindled to a sustainable level. To ensure their survival in the generations to come, humans picked up sustainable lifestyles and went back living in pre-industrial societies. Earth noticed their efforts and helped them out by releasing a system of Hearts, spirits of animals who each bind with a human and serve as their conscience.
Adain's a thirteen-year-old boy who has to complete an adulthood initiation rite with the other thirteen-year-olds called the Heart Chase, to hunt for his heart. Not all children are successful, and not all hearts are good. Most hearts are golden hearts, benevolent to humans. Red hearts are spiteful animal spirits, and they work as bullies in the forest. Black hearts are malevolent animal spirits, who had become embittered from suffering at the hands of humans--these tear people apart, and the village feeds their misfits to the black hearts.
The children who fail to catch a golden heart by sunrise get eaten by the black hearts. Also, in order to be accepted by the village, a person has to be bound to a golden heart. When their heart leaves them (usually because they don't listen to the heart or do bad things to others), they are exiled from the village--basically condemned to be ripped apart by the black hearts.
What I liked:
