'The Sky Is Yours' by Chandler Klang Smith would seem to have lots of elements I would like a story: a decaying futuristic city, a group of characters from different social structures, and dragons. When it was all done, it felt like lots of ideas that didn't really go anywhere.

In the futuristic city of Empire Island, things are not going well. Dragons circle overhead, a reality star named Duncan is sitting in the remains of her crumbling empire, and a young girl named Abby is trying her best just to find food and shelter.

The ideas and setting were grand. The writing was decent. I just didn't actually care what happened to these characters in the least. When the book was done, I felt like I would remember the interesting setting, but soon forget anything that happened.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Hogarth, Crown Publishing, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Thank you @prhinternational for sending me a free review copy in exchange for an honest review. Loved this, please catch my review over at www.thebooknookae.com

I wanted to. I really did.

Gosh, I really hate these reviews. I hate not finishing books. But I just couldn't do it with this one. I absolutely love the blurb and this idea of dragons plus sci-fi/fantasy mash-up futurism with darkness, magic, and intensity but the prose itself didn't live up. I wasn't intrigued by the characters, the tangents of prose were distracting, and in the end I just didn't have enough interest to keep going.

That all being said, I am confident this book has an audience. Why? Because I have reading friends who absolutely love this book and vehemently disagree with me on this review. So, despite my one star, I'd encourage readers intrigued by the synopsis to give it a try. If you're one of the ones to find it amazing, then it was worth it. Unfortunately, it just wasn't for me.

This book was a very unique premise and while I really wanted to get into this book (and I tried I really did) I just couldn’t. The characters were hard to connect with and I found myself not all that interested in what happened less than hallway through. Really unique idea this book just overall fell a bit flat for me.

Often laugh out loud funny novel with manic prose and devilish plotting - echoes of David Foster Wallace. Couldn't get into the characters at all, but I managed to get through most of it rather merrily before realizing I didn't care about anything that was happening.

Of all the horrifying things that could come up from the seas, it's two dragons that have arisen to menace the skies of what was once something like New York City in Chandler Klang Smith's The Sky Is Yours. It's never explicitly stated whether it's an alternate world or set far in the future, but the echoes of our own world are strong. About 50 years before the book begins, the dragons came out of the sea and began to circle the skies...never stopping, never resting, never eating, just breathing flame. The city tries to hang on for a while, but the middle classes eventually empty out, leaving behind only the incarcerated, those too poor to leave, and the extremely wealthy, who refuse to abandon their land holdings. As one can imagine, this situation is tense and ripe for conflict.

Teenagers Duncan Ripple and Baroness Swan Dahlberg belong to the uber-rich classes of the city. Duncan is a YouTube-style star who has been endlessly indulged for his whole life. Swan has been raised mostly in isolation, with a steady diet of Austen-esque novels that has given her a love for witty repartee, propriety, and the idea of a passionately consuming relationship. Their marriage is being negotiated, corporate merger-style, when Duncan goes out for a spin in his flying machine and crash-lands on an island of trash, where he meets Abracadabra, or Abby for short. That's not really her name, but it's the closest thing she knows from the woman who took her to the island and raised her there before she died, leaving Abby all alone. She and Duncan start sleeping together, and she becomes devoted to him...which he finds so enjoyable he brings her back with him to the city (a development that causes Swan significant distress). The marriage does go through, but almost immediately thereafter the Ripple home is attacked by a marauding gang, driving the three teens into the streets and a world none of them has ever known.

This book is weird. Not garden-variety weird either, really weird. So much so that even a couple weeks after reading it, I'm not quite able to say whether or not I liked it. I found it undeniably compelling and interesting and loved the character work it does. I also found it alienating and often hard to follow or buy into even if I could follow it. Although it's a debut, it's a very assured book, with Smith seemingly feeling little need to engage in anything resembling explanation. It doesn't feel hostile to the reader, per se, so much as content to be enjoyed by those willing to go along with it and leave in the dust those who want to understand. Understanding isn't what it's trying to offer. Nor does its ending, which feels organic and earned, feel compelled to tie everything up in a nice neat little bow. There's a general sort of message, but what it seems to want, mostly, is get the reader to think about it rather than present an answer.

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 give up. I was really intrigued by the synopsis and cover of this book but from almost the moment I began reading this book, I was at a loss. I don't think I have ever disliked a book so much so early on while reading. I hate the characters, the world doesn't make any sense nor anything in it. I set it to the side for a few days hoping to come back to it a few days later just in case but every time I thought about picking it up again, I felt nothing but dread. DNF for me on this one.

Many thanks go to Klang Smith, Hogarth, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review. So you know when one is a huge fan of fantasy novels and a new one is released with dragons in it so of course it has to be read? Not so much this one. It's rather bizarre. Sky takes place somewhat in the future. Basically there is some genetic engineering and some drug dealing and some money spending but nothing is serious minded. The dragons just fly in a circular pattern around the city setting things on fire. There are three, no four, no ummmm well, I'm not sure how I consider how many main characters there are? It really focuses are three I'd say-one who lives on a garbage dump island and referred to as a "wild teenaged female" or WTF. See? Not a serious book at all. It was funny in many parts. But not enough for me to say I enjoyed the book. I really was hoping it had more to do with the dragons lol i dont know why I had that idea?

Have you ever been attracted to a book by it's cover? The cover of The Sky Is Yours jumped at me the first time I saw it. When I read the jacket description, I knew I had to read it. Everything about it screams excess, and I had to get my hands on it.


The Sky Is Yours by Chandler Kang Smith is a story of epic proportions. It takes place in a dystopian city where dragons have taken over the sky. The story focuses on three main characters; Duncan Humphrey Ripple V (a reality star and heir of a rich family), Baroness Swan Leonore Dahlberg (Duncan's new wife), and Abby (a feral girl who lived most of her life surrounded by garbage). The three characters are forced to flee from their home and make their way through the city encountering all sort of misadventures.

I confess, I have not finished this book, but I have read enough to have a good idea of how I feel about it. This is dystopia meets satire meets sci-fi. The world described in The Sky Is Yours is crazy and exaggerated, but at the same time you could see a future where this could be our world. Most of the characters are repulsive, with the exception of the Baroness aka Swanny (you definitely feel for her as the story progresses), most characters are caricatures of vices. At the same time as exaggerated as the story and characters are, there is something about the way it's written that makes you question society today and you can see moments where the author is trying to make a point, criticize our world.

I would say this book is a freaky trip, which you will either enjoy or feel utterly confused by. I plan on finishing it, and at least for me it has been an enjoyable ride.

Fun, entertaining sci-fi/fantasy.. It was satirical and kept my attention.

The idea was pretty creative, a dystopian type city, being threatened by flying dragons. I didn't like the characters very much and therefore didn't like the story either.

Klang's The Sky is Yours sounded like such an amazing book. Post-apocalyptic world in the vein of Philip K. Dick but with dragons? SIGN ME UP, RIGHT? Unfortunately, the book fell flat for me. By the halfway point, I failed to connect with any of the characters or the story, and it felt like a mishmash of ideas thrown together without any cohesion or coherence. I can usually knock out a book of this length in three to four days, but getting through half of this one took a slog of a couple of weeks.

I wanted to love this book so much. But I could barely make myself get through it.

This novel was well-written.... but that's about the only positive thing I can say about it. Oh, and I really liked the cover.

I think what bothered me about this novel was the way its characters acted. I know that you don't always like to love the characters; in fact, sometimes, having characters that are despicable can be great. But I couldn't handle the vile acts. I'm not someone who is very sensitive and I can handle sensitive content but this time, I just couldn't deal with the way the author talked about women and people's bodies and rape. I understand that it was for satirical reasons but ... just, no.

Maybe this is a novel I can come back to at another time. But for now, I'm putting it away and I'm sticking to my rating of 1/5 stars.

This book is very different from all the others I have ever read. It's a mixture of genres and it has a lot of fantasy, scifi and dystopian elements. It also has dragons!
Unfortunately this is a book that I didn't enjoy as much as I wanted to. It started very promising for me but then I lost interest to it.
The story has many characters and I can say that I liked a little the main character Ripple despite being spoiled and with many flaws. His perspective to the world of the book was interesting at some points.
The world of the book was hard to understand. It had many aspects that didn't make sense together.

This book isn't for everyone and it was unfortunately not for me.

I gave up 40% in. I couldn't carry on anymore because I just couldn't stand any of the main characters.
Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, The Dunk is an insufferable, bratty 18 year old who has not shown a single shred of any sort of development towards being tolerable.
Abby is truly annoying. A supposed feral beauty, but is treated like an animal almost.
Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, Swanny was almost relatable, and she's intelligent and quite interesting, but is overshadowed by the other characters and can't justify spending any more time reading this book just because she's all right.

Hallucinatory, and not just because there are a few central “chaw” addicts, funny, and willing to have relationships that make you ask yourself “is this even okay?” Chandler Klang Smith’s debut is strong but could have used more dragons.

Loved this book! Imaginative world building with an almost New York and characters that feel completely real in a setting that is complex and concrete and at the same time totally fantastic.
This book will stay with me. I think that the setting and the characters call out for another book. I look forward with hope for a continuation.

The Sky is Yours
February 1, 2018
Dorothy Sasso


I finished Chandler Klang Smith's debut novel last week, but it's taken me since then to process how I felt about it.

I snagged an e-galley from Netgalley (thanks, Netgalley and publishers!) because the premise sounded really cool. The story takes place in a futuristic city called Empire Island, which is falling apart due to two dragons that have

I made it about 15% in before I decided to abandon this one. I have no reason for abandoning it except that I'm not in the mood to read it. It's a quirky read, combining dragons and the apocalypse. The characters are a bit stereotyped, but I was expecting the author to subvert some of those stereotypes. Read it if you're looking for something weird and you read everything apocalyptic. It's well written (at least, it was at the 15% mark).

Thanks to Netgalley and Crown Publishing for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Posted to Goodreads 01/29]
[Blurbed for Book Riot for their Sneak Peak series, will appear on website soon]