"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. Amassive 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."--Amazon - (Baker & Taylor)

With a bounty of his head, Milo Quick, surviving on his wit, speed and best friends, discovers the flying city’s powerful secret hidden away for centuries – one that could ignite a war. - (Baker & Taylor)

“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.
 

Jason Sheehan is an award-winning freelance journalist and author. In addition to being a book and video game critic for NPR, he has published three books for adults. This is his first book for young readers. - (Penguin Putnam)

Booklist Reviews

In this action-packed steampunk fantasy, Milo Quick, 13 and an orphan, lives in the flying city of Highgate. He gets by with the help of his close friends, Jules and Dagda, and by engaging in some less-than-lawful pursuits. Complicating his already dangerous life is the fact that Highgate is full of locked doors and dark secrets, one of which could start a war if discovered. When a massive armada emerges and surrounds the city, the small spaceship Halcyon manages to get past it with a more personal mission—capture Milo. Milo and his friends endeavor to stay safe, while coming to realize that their city is not the place they once thought. 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 (2004) and Philip Reeve's Fever Crumb (2010), this fantasy, full of lessons about close friendships and the power of fighting for what's right, will hook readers seeking adventure. Grades 5-8. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

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) Copyright Kirkus 2022 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

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.)

School Library Journal Reviews

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