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 … 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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I really enjoyed THE SKY IS YOURS. The characters were more like caricatures–over-the-top fools who yearn to stroke their own egos and want the world to lie down at their feet. I hated all of them. But here’s the thing: I don’t think readers are supposed to like these characters. They’re horrible fucking people. They’re rich, entitled, sexist assholes who get what they deserve, even after their arcs hit their crescendoes. The single selfless person in the bunch is the only one who has the good sense to figure out how to end the seemingly endless reign of terror, and of course, they take the fall so the rest of the elite assholes can keep being elite assholes. Yeah, there’s some growth among these losers, but by the end, they’re just a little older, not much wiser.
I don’t want to say too much, but if you’re thinking about reading this book, just know it’s about a bunch of rich, shitty motherfuckers who just want to keep being rich, shitty motherfuckers. Kinda like … well, real life in 2020!
This book is like nothing else I’ve ever read. I loved the story. I found it interesting with unexpected surprises. What I liked are the characters, the combination of science-fiction with fantasy, and the mystery behind the history of the city. I can see were some may find it sexist and racist, but I did not let it keep from enjoying this story. I hated Duncan. Every time he got in trouble I hoped he would get his come-up-ance, but was disappoint each time. My favorite character is hands-down Swanny. Her and her mother are strong and don’t take any sh*t from anyone. I did not everything I wanted in the ending. That is the only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5.
It seemed to spend most of the time with the story not going anywhere.
just kinda weird. not bad-weird, just… strange
waste of time
Highly original and entertaining.
Smith has created an incredibly vivid world that exists somewhere between Terry Gilliam’s movie “Brazil” and a near-future distopian New York City. The story is full of twists and turns, anti-heroes with hearts of gold and would-be heroes who can’t even save themselves. While this is a fantasy story in which dragons do exist, Smith has managed to make the story seem very real and very believable. A deeply entertaining read.
These reviews are my least favorite to write. And I’ve had two of them in one week. The Sky is Yours is a very creative and well written book. This is actually the entire reason I gave this book one star. I really tried to like this book, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t like any of the characters and I didn’t really get the point of the story. I kept pushing through hoping that something would change and everything would click and I would end up changing my mind about this book, but that never happened.
Even though I didn’t enjoy this book, I do think there is an audience out there who will absolutely love it. So please, if you are someone who typically enjoys dystopian sci-fi adventures and this blurb intrigues you, give this one a chance. Maybe you will completely disagree with me and this will be your next 5-Star read.
I voluntarily received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.