City of Savages

December 1, 2014
There are plenty of heart-pounding moments in Kelly’s debut, and an abundance of vividly imagined details bring post-apocalyptic New York City to searing life. But the biggest risk is not one that the characters take—it’s Kelly’s bold spotlighting of the bonds between women. Sky and her younger sister, Phee, were raised in isolation by their fierce, reticent mother. Now they scrape together a subsistence living in the concrete shells of the damaged city. Winter forces them into temporary community with fellow survivors in Central Park, where the despot Rolladin enforces the rules at whim. The humans who have survived disaster neither dominate nor submit to the new landscape, and men and women compete as equal players and equal threats. Phee and Sky’s alternation of first-person, present-tense narration is unusual and effective as they mutually discover their history, survive their present, and grab for a future that acknowledges their loving sororal relationship. This bold choice for Saga’s launch lineup puts both the imprint and the author on track for idiosyncratic success. Agent: Adriann Ranta, Wolf Literary Services.

December 1, 2014
Two sisters try to survive in the ruins of New York City not quite two decades after a world war destroyed civilization.Sky, Phee, and their mother, Sarah, navigate bombed-out streets and scavenge food. In the summertime, they live in a Wall Street apartment with a roof garden, shooting squirrels and escaped zoo animals. In winter, they join the POW camp in Central Park. However, events force them out of the camp and into the subway tunnels where cannibals roam, and they find themselves in a far more dangerous and secure prison. Kelly writes in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of the very different sisters: Sky, older but smaller, and Phee, physically aggressive and less intellectual. She ties the book together with their mother's journal, which the girls read secretly because their mother refuses to discuss the past. It describes Sarah's effort to survive with two babies just after the attacks destroyed the city and provides some answers for the girls. The author doesn't shrink from depicting the post-apocalyptic violence, some of it extreme, in a street fight and in gun battles. The galloping tension keeps the pages turning. Romance enters the plot when both girls fall for the same boy, a recent arrival by boat from England, who reveals a major secret. Gripping stuff.

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November 1, 2014

Gr 10 Up-Sisters Skylar and Phee Millar live in post World War III New York City with their mother. They spend most of their time downtown in an abandoned Wall Street apartment. When winter arrives, they make the yearly trek up to Central Park to take refuge in the camp run by Rolladin, its dictatorial leader. When strangers from the outside world show up in the park, their existence as they know it begins to unravel. This dystopian novel aims really high yet never quite achieves its lofty goals. Kelly packs a lot into the narrative, including cannibal infested subway tunnels, hotels run by a religious cult, and a diary that contains the story of how their mother survived the initial attacks of the war. While it is refreshing to read a standalone work in the genre, this is a story that could have benefited from more volumes, with plot coming at the sacrifice of character development at times. For avid fans of postapocalyptic YA-a bit of a stretch for anyone else.-Christopher Lassen, Brooklyn Public Library

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015

The survivors of a terrible war huddle in a POW camp located in New York's Central Park every winter, controlled by wardens put in place by the victorious Red Allies. Teens Phee and Sky, along with their mother, Sarah, spend summers on their own in lower Manhattan, yet like all other New Yorkers they must show up in the park every winter. Mischance puts them at odds with warden Rolladin and they run from the park, only to fall into an even more dangerous situation where everything they thought they knew about their family and the wider world is wrong. VERDICT This dystopian debut is more likely to appeal to teens than adults, with chapters alternating between bookish Sky and her fiercer sister Phee and tending toward melodrama when they both fall for the same refugee boy who arrives with a group from England.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015
In Kelly's debut dystopian fantasy, Red Dawn meets Escape from New York and The Hunger Games. This post-WWIII story focuses on two teen sisters surviving inside the prisoner-of-war camp that was once Manhattan. Led by their widowed mother, the two teens, Sky and her younger sister, Phee, have endured years of a fragile existence in a wild and broken city. When the sisters find their mother's journal, with entries from days before the war, they begin to unravel a mystery that threatens to upend all they know about their parents and the past. While the dual narration by Phee and Sky is generally effective, it sometimes runs together, but the frantic pacing and nonstop action will keep readers engaged. Kelly obviously knows her way around Manhattan, and her use of the subway (home to cannibals!) and other landmarks helps her create a setting that is all the more bleak and creepy for its being familiar. Expect to hear more from the talented Kelly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)