Children of the Flying City

by Jason Sheehan Narrated by Mark Bramhall

Overview

“Richly imagined and emotionally resonant, Children of the Flying City is a fantasy for young and old alike. This book gave my heart wings.”
-Pierce Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Rising

“Children of the Flying City feels, at once, timeless and wondrously, gloriously new.”
-Katie Williams, author of Tell the Machine Goodnight

Brought to the flying city of Highgate when he was only five years old, orphan Milo Quick has never known another home. Now almost thirteen, Milo survives one daredevil grift at a time, relying only on his wit, speed, and best friends Jules and Dagda.

A massive armada has surrounded Highgate's crumbling armaments. Because behind locked doors-in opulent parlors and pneumatic forests and a master toymaker's workshop-the once-great flying city protects a powerful secret, hidden away for centuries. A secret that's about to ignite a war. One small airship, the Halcyon, has slipped through the ominous blockade on a mission to collect Milo-and the rich bounty on his head-before the fighting begins. But the members of the Halcyon's misfit crew aren't the only ones chasing Milo Quick.
 
True friendship is worth any risk in this clever, heart-racing adventure from award-winning author and journalist Jason Sheehan. Sheehan weaves together wry narration and multiple points of view to craft a richly imagined tale that is dangerous and surprising, wondrous and joyful.
 

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

01/17/2022

In his children’s debut, Sheehan (Cooking Dirty, for adults) offers up an absorbing, action-packed series opener centering deeply resourceful child protagonists. When he was five, Milo Quick was taken from his father, and then handed to “a different man and a different man after that,” until “escaping became his vocation.” Now almost 13, the presumed-white boy survives on the treacherous streets of congested Flying City Highgate. Part of a gang of child thieves—along with protective, red-haired Jules and pale-skinned, quiet Dagda, who has facial scars—Milo enjoys “all the great and sweeping joys that came from being a child left alone.” When a blockade of airships and waterships creates a growing stranglehold on the city, multiple factions home in on Milo as a person of interest: the cruel Total King of Highgate’s thieves demands increased tithes from Milo’s gang, and the pirates of the airship Halcyon seek to steal him away. As Milo and his friends struggle to stay alive in the increasingly dangerous city, events quickly spiral out of control, revealing Milo’s true purpose. An arch, omniscient narrative—by turns brutal and sweet—unspools into an ambitious, wide-ranging story of survival and loyalty set in a vividly described locale reminiscent of Victorian London. Ages 10–up. Agent: David Dunton, Harvey Klinger. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

Sheehan crafts a richly detailed world and uses multiple points of view to relate the narrative, keeping the characters central to the high-stakes plot. Following in the tradition of Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn and Philip Reeve’s Fever Crumb, this fantasy, full of lessons about close friendships and the power of fighting for what’s right, will hook readers seeking adventure.” –Booklist

“An arch, omniscient narrative—by turns brutal and sweet—unspools into an ambitious, wide-ranging story of survival and loyalty.” –Publishers Weekly

"Perfect for anyone who loves action and mystery and cliffhanger endings.” –SLC

“Richly imagined and emotionally resonant, Children of the Flying City is a fantasy for young and old alike. At times evoking the starkness of Cormac McCarthy and the dark, humanistic fantasy of Stephen King, Sheehan will make your imagination soar, tear your heart back to the ground, dust you off, then send you back to the sky with a grin on your face. This book gave my heart wings.”
–Pierce Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Rising
 
“Children of the Flying City feels, at once, timeless and wondrously, gloriously new. Jason Sheehan has crafted the bones of a great story, the prickling flesh of unforgettable characters, the gasp of gorgeous language, and he's tucked a velvety, multi-chambered secret at the book's center.”
–Katie Williams, author of Tell the Machine Goodnight

School Library Journal

04/01/2022

Gr 4–6—There is a boy and he is quick, so quick he can escape the police as he thieves, so quick that he has named himself Milo Quick though that is not his name. There is a girl, if she can be called that. She is called Mouse, but her name is Dagda. She, like Milo, is pale skinned and dark haired, but a killing machine, 12 years old for hundreds of years. She is wanted by the Armada that is moving airships to surround the Flying City where they live. He is wanted by a suspicious group of people led by The Captain who are risking their lives for the money to extract him. Milo is also being watched by the dreaded Sandman, while Dagda is being repaired by a toymaker who does not have the skills or tools as the city is crumbling, and losing its knowledge of technology. Can they escape before they are killed? Will the only home they have known be destroyed? This steampunk world feels both fantastical and based in a reality of time past, focusing on children who live on the streets and create communities without adult supervision. It feels shabby and harsh with rotten teeth and greasy hair galore (although not much diversity in appearances), yet readers will want to visit because there is something magical about the place. The narrative style is unique but feels inconsistent, at times breaking the fourth wall to talk directly to readers and trying to create a tone not unlike that in "A Series of Unfortunate Events." The point of view bounces around to a different character with each short chapter, some of them playing bit parts in the story. This narration style creates a barrier and prevents deeper emotional connection to the story. This book ends on a true cliffhanger, with everyone hanging in a balance. VERDICT A great example of dystopian steampunk for middle graders, but some might find the narrative voice and style an obstacle.—Clare A. Dombrowski

Kirkus Reviews

2021-12-24
As fleets of hostile warships gather over a floating city, a young thief finds himself the object of an urgent manhunt.

Readers can be excused for coming away bewildered by Sheehan’s competing storylines, disconnected events, genre-bending revelations, and refusal to fit any of the major players in the all-White–presenting cast consistently into the roles of villain, ally, or even protagonist. Continually shifting through points of view and annoyingly punctuated with an omniscient narrator’s portentous commentary, the tale centers on the exploits of 12-year-old street urchin Milo Quick and his squad of juvenile ragamuffins (seemingly juvenile at any rate; one is eventually revealed to be something else entirely) in an aerial city of Dickensian squalor threatened by a multinational flying armada. Though a lot of people are after Milo, ranging from the swashbuckling crew of a flying privateer hired (ostensibly) to kidnap him and a vengeful punk bent on bloody murder to a sinister truant officer paid lavishly by mysterious parties to watch over him, he ultimately winds up—or so it seems—being no more than a red herring all along. The actual target is revealed piecemeal in conversations and flashbacks before the commencement of a climactic bombardment and an abrupt cutoff in which three side characters, miraculously shrugging off multiple knife and bullet wounds, themselves suddenly take center stage to set up a sequel.

A few promising, even brilliant bits are lost in an ill-constructed jumble of warring plotlines and ambiguous agendas. (Science fiction. 11-14)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176132274
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/15/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

Read an Excerpt

Go!

The boy survived, as boys sometimes do. For years, on and off the streets. He did many things, saw many things, suffered many things. A few of them left scars, and a lot of them made for good stories, but we don’t have time for any of those right now.

Because right now it is later. Years. And the boy—twelve now, almost thirteen—squats, fingers gripping the crumbling concrete between his too-­small shoes, on the low wall at the edge of a roof six stories up. He’s watching the cops scramble up the creaking fire escape and counting down the time until their arrival.

He says, “Ten seconds, Jules,” and flexes his toes inside his shoes, ready to run, to jump, to fly if he needs to.

Jules says, “I know.”

“And I’m being generous.”

“I know.”

Jules is big and strong and just a little bit older than the boy. They’ve found the door they need to go through. One they’d scouted the night before and the night before that. On those nights, there was no lock. Now there is. Because that’s just the way life works: things only go wrong when it really matters.

Mouse looks past Jules as he pulls at the lock and rams his shoulder into the door. She says the boy’s name, and he glances back at her and smiles quickly, as if to tell her not to worry. Not about any little thing ever. He pulls up the scarf he wears over his head, covers his mouth and nose, smothering that smile. But Mouse knows it’s still there.

The cops are upset. Yelling up the fire escape at the boy crouched there watching them. They’re angry at being made to run and climb and jump. If they make it to the roof, they won’t be wagging their fingers and scolding the boy and his friends. The police will break their bones with lead-­weighted clubs and then throw their bodies off the roof to smash on the pavement below.

Slipped while fleeing. All three of them.

Tragic. Of course.

The boy is fine with this. He understands the rules and plays by them, too. He’d been up on the roof by himself before all this. Had brought his wrenches and loosened all the rusted bolts that secured the top of the fire escape to the roof. Two seconds of work and one good shove—that’s all it’ll take to send the whole thing crashing down. He has the wrench in his hand right now. Has already adjusted the bit so it will fit neatly over the heads of the two bolts.

“Five seconds.”

“I know,” says Jules. “Mouse, my tools.”

Mouse hands him a chunk of rock from the roof, a little stub of twisted rebar sticking out one side. Like a hammer.

Jules weighs it in his hand. He says, “Nice,” then lifts it, swings, hits the lock. Hits it again. And again. And on the fourth try it works, but he smashes his finger a little, tears off the nail. It hurts, and he drops the rock hammer and tears spring to his eyes and he wants to stick the finger in his mouth and suck on it, but he doesn’t. Because he would never.

The lock is broken. He hits the door with his shoulder and it scrapes open. He calls to the boy, voice sharp and loud with pain.

Mouse goes down the stairs first, leaping an entire flight, the ragged scrap of a shawl she wears billowing out behind her like stone-­colored wings. She lands on one foot, one knee, one hand, looks back through dust and darkness.

Jules waits for the boy.

The boy walks.

The first policeman’s hand touches the lip of wall around the roof.

The boy asks, “You ready?”

“Course,” says Jules.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“After you.”

“No, you first. I insist.”

Then they laugh. They both go through the door, push it closed. Jules pulls two wooden wedges out of a pocket and shoves them under the door. Chocks. He hammers them in with the palm of one hand, then kicks each one for good measure.

And then they run, all three of them—down a flight and another flight, feet going slapslapslapskidslap on the old steps, hands skimming the loose, rusted railings for balance. They’re careful not to trip over the garbage strewn in the stairwell, the mounds of rags and blankets that might be people sleeping.

The closed door and the chocks won’t hold the police. Not for very long. But that isn’t the point. It isn’t meant to stop them. The boy and his friends only need a few extra seconds.

Three floors down, they tumble. Laughing. Harder to stop than it is to keep running, and they end up in a pile.

The boy says, “Door,” and Jules bangs on it twice with his fist.

It opens a few inches.

Three floors up, someone kicks the other door that Jules had wedged closed . . .

“Wait,” says the boy.

 . . . and kicks the door again—a huge, booming sound . . .

Jules says, “Gods, they’re so slow.”

“Grown-­ups,” Mouse says, and shrugs.

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