I had the opportunity to read Drake and the Fliers without knowing anything about it, and that was the surprise, the real treat. The Fourth Descendant author Allison Maruska’s fearless rendering of a post-apocalyptic fantasy about a teenage boy braving a strange new world is original and compelling. Maruska trims the fat in this raw urban fantasy, giving virtually no backstory, and it works. She drops you smack dab in the middle of this dystopian world and you’re never able to guess the direction the story will go, which is as it should be. The descriptions and imagery paste you on the page. As you fly with Drake you can see, “The ghost of the city came into view. The bridges stood empty, though the Golden Gate’s towers poked out of the fog blanketing the bay.”

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