The Sky Is Yours

A Novel

De: Chandler Klang Smith

Narrado por: Kirsten Potter

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • NPR • New York Public Library • LitHub • Mental Floss

“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

New Fantasy headliner

Go into this book without a boiler plate expectation of the fantasy genre and you will enjoy it. This is not written for someone who likes classical fantasy tropes. Honestly it resonates as a story because it feels like the author wrote what she would want to read and wasn’t writing in order to cater to someone else’s taste. This is written to be more of a science fantasy story that blends elements of sci-fi and the fantasy genre in order to create something fresh. Imagine the dark humor within the Game of Thrones series, the writing style of Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy, and the Lord of the Rings level of detail. It has a very modern voice and makes a lot of social commentary about internet culture, United States Politics, Social media culture, Brotastic Broes, a thirteen year old girl’s closeted sexual desires
, the economic divide, sense of entitlement, and the use of dragons in fiction. I want to listen to it a second time already so I can pick up new things.

Disappointing

Interesting atart and then somewhere the plot gets lost and the characters' behaviour doesn't match their previous characteristics. Was hoping for some closure, should have ditched it.

Most perfect author and narrator combo ever

I seldom write reviews, but this audio book experience was exceptional. The author wove her plot with skill and attention to detail, tying the characters' stories together perfectly. Ms. Potter proved equal to the writing with her narration, getting every nuance of accent and personality. My only quibble might be that the character of Sharkey was voiced a bit tritely, but otherwise she was flawless. It's been a while since I listened to a book that kept me in the car after I reached my destination, but this one did in 108 degree weather.

What a story. Smart. Dragons but not really.

I usually avoid stories that have dragons in them. And Magic. and this has dragons and some sort of paranormal Magic? When it really might just be a function of genetic engineering or something. this is not a story about magic and Dragons. it's a story about attempting to be something more in a world that is descending rapidly into something much less. it's about New York City essentially devastated in abandoned but for a few people, old money trying to stay ontop, and then a second town inside it, filled with incredibly resilient survivors scrapping by, who are really outcasts or criminals. it's filled with a number of really good characters. really good characters. Since it had dragons in it, I wasn't sure I was going to finish it, but I sure did. It kept me going the whole way through. great read. Or listen.

a hot mess

This book had a lot of potential and a lot of great ideas and some very good writing, but somehow, all put together, it just didn't work for me. I'll try to explain what put me off this book, but there's a lot of factors.

Firstly, a LOT happens in this book. It would be a lot if we were following one of the three main characters' stories, yet we try to follow all three plus some side characters. Consequently, the action is very start and stop. We follow characters into situations and then time jumps forward a bit and they get tossed into a new situation without our being able to understand the consequences/implications of the first situation. As a result, it is hard to get involved in character development (if there really is any). The book is about either Duncan or Swanny or Abbey at any given time, but their stories have little relevance to one another.

As a result of so many things going on, the book leaves tons of unanswered questions. Things that should have been super cool bits end up just dangling loose ends. Swanny's teeth are the best example of this. Smith introduces her by saying she grew up in the mansion with only her mother and the dentist. Which is an awesome way to raise questions. Slowly we learn more about the teeth. But in the end, this neat thing turns out to be no more consequential than if Swanny had, say, green hair. By the time she gets to the chaw shop, it basically never comes up again. It's a huge lost opportunity. This sort of lack of follow-through plagues the whole book.

When I finished the book, I felt that there were huge unanswered questions about the premise. Like, is it really dystopia if only one city is affected by these dragons? Is Empire City actually New York City, and if so, why not say so? What happened to the rest of the world? Are they just going along like Empire City isn't constantly on fire? If you are going to invent a city for a book, why not set the book on an invented planet? Why do people drive flying cars in a city where unpredictable dragons rule the skies? I could go on.

Normally, I re-read books that I'm this confused about, and try to figure out why, but I just can't face slogging through all this again, not for a while.