As a Sentient living at the end of time, sixteen-year-old Avrilis is one of the few to know that life repeats, replaying a script exactly. As an orphan cloistered in her home for the past three years, she knows that even a scripted life can suddenly change. It has, this time around. Her mother died. Her father disappeared. Her only companions have been the other planet in the sky, her memory of a boy called Isaac, and the protective “halo” that absorbs the electricity a Sentient creates by living off-script—even if she didn’t have a choice.
Leaving home is Avrilis’ only chance at finding the real Isaac and uncovering what ruined her family’s script, making this lifetime go so terribly wrong. But outside, zealots are preying on anyone who defies the planets with change.
When Avrilis saves the life of a vagabond moments before death, she means him to be her protection. Instead, the two find the subterranean Sentient city and discover that the father who abandoned her has a plan to end the world for good. Now she’ll cross the sky, from her planet to the other, and find out whether this world is worth saving—as long as the zealots and the end of time don’t catch up to her first.
Download and start listening now!
“Bethany C. Morrow’s The Last Life of Avrilis releases this fall, and is a lyrical sci-fi steampunk novel about a Black heroine who, with her Asian love interest, has to figure out how to change the script that is literally running—and ruining—their lives. It’s the kind of story-about-writing-stories that Hollywood loves, so let me put a flea in Ava DuVernay’s ear, as it would be a natural segue from her next project, A Wrinkle in Time, to filming Avrilis.”
—
Paula Young Lee, Lowell Thomas Award–winning author