Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Chandler Kling Smith author of The Sky is Yours, published this January by Hogarth.

Chandler is a graduate of Bennington and the creative writing MFA program at Columbia. She has worked in book publishing and currently lives, teaches and tutors in New York City.

The Sky is Yours is Chandler’s first novel but will not be her last.

We are in the future. We are in Empire Island, a lot like New York. It is a crumbling edifice to man’s folly. And on top of that it is beset by a pair of fire breathing dragons who languidly circle the city, belching fire at buildings and people in a somewhat (perhaps) haphazard way, especially interested in Torch town, a prison colony set inside of the city and self governed in a Machiavellian but workable manner.

Against this background, emerge our three protagonists, Duncan, Swanny and Abby who run away under the most unsettling of circumstances and settle in various parts of the heart of darkness that is Empire.

Because of the ubiquitous dragons and their flame throwing, Duncan who is (or was) a spoiled brat with a serious case of “affluenza” (he has an inhaler) becomes a fireman, and a good one, Abby a magical and lovely enchantress of sorts takes us through a maze of riddles and wonders to a crystalline point and which to say more would be a spoiler, and Abby surprises all of us with a mouthful of extra teeth, a lot more spunk than one would expect as she settles and thrives in Torch town with an unkempt and canny Sharkey, who reminds me of Danny DeVito where she doles out licorice- like skeins of soporific and vintage drugs.

The momentum of the novel is almost musical and the latter part of the book is like the pull string at the top of a velvet bag, drawing the characters and there are many finely drawn ones, beside the protagonists, tighter and tighter into to a point where we all understand (kinda sorta) where we have been and perhaps where we are going.

And on top of everything else, Chandler’s agent is Bill Clegg who is probably the best in the world.

And with that and my usual run-on sentences, welcome to the show Chandler and thanks so much for joining us today.