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“Influenced by the likes of Jane Austen and Rick and Morty, Smith tackles timely issues while leaving room for some delicious reality TV references.”—Entertainment Weekly
In the burned-out, futuristic city of Empire Island, three young people navigate a crumbling metropolis constantly under threat from a pair of dragons that circle the skies. When violence strikes, reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the spoiled scion of the metropolis’ last dynasty; Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, his tempestuous, death-obsessed betrothed; and Abby, a feral beauty he discovered tossed out with the trash, are forced to flee everything they've ever known. As they wander toward the scalded heart of the city, they face fire, conspiracy, mayhem, unholy drugs, dragon-worshippers, and the monsters lurking inside themselves.
In this bombshell of a novel, Chandler Klang Smith has imagined an unimaginable world: scathingly clever and gorgeously strange, The Sky Is Yours is at once faraway and disturbingly familiar, its singular chaos grounded in the universal realities of love, family, and the deeply human desire to survive at all costs.
Praise for The Sky is Yours
“It’s a mesmeric world, comic in the way teenage voyages of self-discovery inevitably are, but with an undertone of menace, horror, even hints of allegory. Satire, too . . . Smith’s imagination is inexhaustible. The Sky Is Yours is a great and disturbing debut, which colonizes a new realm of the magic city.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Smith’s gifts of imagination are staggering. . . . Much like Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Charlie Jane Anders’s All the Birds in the Sky before it, The Sky is Yours filters youth through a warped yet poignantly canny speculative fiction lens. At the same time, it’s funny as hell, full of madcap detail, firecracker dialogue, and a healthy dose of absurdism in the face of darkness.”—NPR
“Readers who love ambitious literary genre fiction should be on the lookout for Smith’s first novel, a vibrantly uncanny dystopia set on an island metropolis, in the shadow of dragons that swoop overhead, where income inequality and mass incarceration have spun out of control.”—HuffPost
“An unmissable masterpiece.”—PopSugar
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 23, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780451496287
- File size: 8280 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780451496287
- File size: 8280 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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October 9, 2017
Smith’s hyperimaginative debut takes place in a futuristic, decaying variation on New York City called Empire Island that has two dragons—one green, one yellow—constantly circling overhead and menacing the population below. Eighteen-year-old Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, star of the reality series Late Capitalism’s Royalty, has been engaged to the Baroness Swan “Swanny” Lenore Dahlberg (who has been homeschooled by her single-minded mother, Pippi) by his parents (financier Humphrey and former model Katya). While exploring beyond the city, Duncan meets a wild girl named Abby and brings her back to his family’s mansion. On his wedding night, he decides to run away with her, but the mansion is invaded by marauders from the self-governed prison colony of Torchtown, forcing Duncan, Swanny, and Abby to run away together. They escape into the dark heart of the city; Duncan learns how to fight fires—a constant in this dragon-threatened metropolis—Abby befriends a magic rat, and Swanny winds up in Torchtown. Smith’s novel calls to mind the works of Nick Harkaway and Game of Thrones. Although the story is overlong, it gathers momentum in its last third, bringing this novel home with a hopeful conclusion. It’s an auspicious debut with enough inventiveness for two novels. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. -
November 15, 2017
Two dragons rose from the sea in the year 301970. The dragons have since set fire to much of Empire Island, leaving behind a dystopian wasteland. It is only the very rich and the very poor who have survived. The rich form alliances with each other in the hope of the city returning to its former splendor. One such alliance is the marriage contract between teenagers Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg (Swanny) and reality-show star Duncan Ripple V. Not happy about that marriage is Abby, a feral girl whom Duncan romanced when his personal aircraft crashed on her garbage island. These three proceed to tangle with each other, the residents of a prison colony, and the dragons. While dystopia with dragons sounds like an intriguing new genre hybrid, the book sometimes fails to live up to its creative premise. The action is slow to start, and far too much time is given to spoiled-brat Duncan. Swanny, however, is the genuine star of the show. Loud, vibrant, and witty, she crackles with energy and life. Let's hope she returns, sans Duncan the Dud.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.) -
September 1, 2017
This genre bender combines literary flair with classic sf tropes seen as cult-worthy by enthusiastic in-housers. In a futuristic, inevitably dystopian city, the skies are dominated by a pair of danger-breathing dragons as drugs, dragon worshippers, and furious fires threaten the survivors below. Among them: bad-boy Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, his mercurial fiancee, and a wild young beauty he's rescued.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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