New Dragon City

Five years after the dragon apocalypse wiped out most of humankind, and two years after his survivalist father’s bunker ran out of food, 12-year-old Noah is eking out a tenuous existence as part of a band of survivors in New York City. When the dragons awake from their winter hibernation a month early, while Noah’s out scavenging for nonperishables, the group relocates from their part-time hotel residence to their subway-tunnel shelter. Noah, however, secretly remains aboveground to search with his dad for Noah’s mother, who has purportedly joined a cult of dragon sympathizers. When a chance Times Square encounter with a young dragon named Asha leaves Noah inexplicably connected to her via a mental bond, the revelation suggests it may be possible for humans and dragons to coexist peacefully, but Noah’s father refuses to back down from his anti-dragon crusade. In a contemporary-feeling metropolitan adventure replete with dragon deniers and fake news, Mancusi (the Dragon Ops series) lightly sketches the society’s day-to-day realities; if the resulting world is unevenly built, it also imbues Noah’s experiences with a sense of awe, making for an entertaining, flashy novel centering family and interspecies friendship. Noah reads as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Mandy Hubbard, Emerald City Literary Agency. (Oct.)