City of Savages

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