City of Savages

Debut author Lee Kelly's City of Savages is a post-apocalyptic war tale.

It's been nearly two decades since the Red Allies first attacked New York, and Manhattan is now a prisoner-of-war camp, ruled by Warden Rolladin and her brutal, impulsive warlords.  For 17-year-old Skyler Miller, Manhattan is a cage that keeps her from the world beyond the city's borders.  But for Sky's 16-year-old sister, Phee, the P.O.W. camp is a dangerous playground of possibility, and the only home she'd ever want.

When Sky and Phee discover their mom's hidden journal from the outbreak of the war, they both realize there's more to Manhattan- and their mother- than either of them ever imagined.  And after a group of strangers arrives at the annual P.O.W. census, the girls begin to uncover the island's long-kept secrets.  The strangers hail from England,a country supposedly destroyed by the Red Allies, and Rolladin's lies about Manhattan's captivity begin to unravel.

Hungry for the truth, the sisters set a series  of events in motion that ends in the death of one of Rolladin's guards.  Now they're outlaws, forced to join the strange Englishmen on an escape mission through Manhattan.  Their fight takes them into the subways haunted by cannibals, into the arms of a sadistic cult the city's Meatpacking District, and through the pages of their mom's old journal, into the island's dark and shocking past.  Sky and Phee are dependent on each other, and their ragged posse for survival, but as their feelings grow toward the handsome English bot Ryder, love and jealousy threaten to break them apart.

The Breakdown:
1. So excited to win a signed copy of this book from That Artsy Reader Girl's blog.  You can pretty much never go wrong with a post-apocalyptic setting for a book. Although the whole war with the Red Allies remind me a lot of the movie Red Dawn, I liked that the war was there, but more of we know it is happening, not a clear and present thing in the book.

2. Not going to lie, I much preferred Sky's chapters to Phee's chapters.  I just identified better with Sky's character.  She loved to read and learn, and she thought about things before acting. More than once, her ideas would have kept her and Phee out of trouble, but Phee ignores her.  Phee is impulsive, and often is too quick to dismiss Sky's worries that are totally valid.

3. I found that this was an interesting twist on most love triangles you see in YA fiction.  Being two girls, sisters at that, chasing one boy.  For me, was pretty obvious that Sky and Ryder belonged together. They just had so much more in common with each other. Phee just seems to be forcing something that is not there with Ryder.

4. Lee definitely has some interesting groups in around this Manhattan with warlords, crazy cults, and cannibals, there is never a dull moment. Then there is the added bonus of getting to see how the attack happened and the immediate aftermath in their mother's journal.  I thought the ending was very appropriate for the book.

To Read or Not to Read:
Read