That mad energy is infectious, especially as these three uneasy allies are forced to embark on a quest into the squalid, perilous underbelly of Empire Island, where drug designers, pizza delivery drivers, resigned firefighters, and members of dragon cults circulate in a teeming social osmosis across the many barriers of the city - all while keeping fearful eyes on the fire from the sky. Rather than a genre mash-up, this is a genre car crash: kinetic, explosive, and uproariously messy.

This Regency-romance setup clashes deliriously with the sci-fi and fantasy elements of the book, and it's clear that's exactly what Smith intends. On the eve of his arranged marriage to Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, Ripple meets a teenaged urchin named Abby - short for Abracadabra - with whom he becomes smitten. People conduct Look圜hats on a device called the LookyGlass, while the Toob pacifies the masses with reality-show froth such as Late Capitalism's Royalty.ġ8-year-old Duncan Humphrey Ripple V is a former star of Late Capitalism's Royalty, and just as vapid and libertine as that requires. Technology, at first glance, seems advanced beyond our own in a pulpy sci-fi kind of way, but it turns out to be eerily similar to our present. The rich live in regal, decadent splendor behind high walls, while the poor scavenge the smoldering waste beyond - and criminals are penned in an enclave called Torchtown that just so happens to be the most vulnerable to the dragons. It vaguely resembles New York City in geography and size, only it's been ravaged and divided by catastrophe. Smith, however, has even vaster monsters on her radar.Įmpire Island is 'an island full of eyes,' a place where the populace nervously scans the skies for the yellow and green dragons that occasionally rain fire and death from above. They're there, of course specifically, two ominous dragons relentlessly circle The Sky Is Yours' setting, a futuristic and dystopian city known as Empire Island. On the considerable merits of her new novel, The Sky Is Yours, Chandler Klang Smith should be added to that list - although it would be a mistake to think that dragons are the book's bread and butter. Even during the long stretches where the mainstream has largely ignored these awesome, ancient lizards of genre fiction, authors from Lucius Shepard to Robin Hobb to Naomi Novik have kept dragon lore alive, radically reinventing the scaly beasts along the way.

But for many of us, dragons never stopped being cool. Dragons, thanks to Game of Thrones, are cool again.

Chandler klang smith the sky is yours