Girls at the Edge of the World by Laura Brooke Robson (review)

Twelve hundred years ago, a man kept a Captain's Log of the last Harbinger Year, wherein ten storms culminated in a giant flood that eradicated most life on earth. Now the Log is held up as a religious text, the storms are starting again, and the country of Kostrov is woefully underprepared. Natasha, seventeen-year-old principal of the well-esteemed aerial silk dancers known as Royal Flyers, thinks she's guaranteed a spot in the elite royal maritime service, until she overhears her director discussing the Royal Flyers' exclusion. Meanwhile, Ella means to take the spot of a pregnant Flyer to get close to the king for revenge after he murdered Ella's lover—the king's sister—and she was branded, literally, as a siren, a derogatory term for a lesbian. As Natasha tries to prove herself worthy of being put on the royal fleet, she's willing to take shortcuts, and as Ella gets closer to her goal, she has to reveal more and more of her troubled past to outsiders. Robson's world building is extremely detailed, from the powerful religious sect overruling both the king and the nature-based religions to the flood-based mythology many Flyer dances are based on. Ella's dark humor complements Natasha's earnestness well, and the camaraderie among the Royal Flyers that gradually drags Ella in to genuinely liking them is heartwarmingly depicted. From early on, readers will be rooting for Ella and Natasha to get together because of their electric chemistry, and as the teens' courses collide on their clashing life goals, they have to make decisions about what's really important in a doomed world.