Isabella Rogge's Blog: The Redhead Writer, page 231

January 4, 2016

Book Review: Blood Red Road

By Moira Young (Dust Lands #1)

Unique, intense read with a clear-voiced, malleable main character, interesting, fresh plot, and good time management.

Rating: 9/10

Genre: Post-apocalyptic Western

Summary:

Saba lives in Silverlake, a wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms where her family scavenge from landfills left by the long-gone Wrecker civilization. After four cloaked horsemen kidnap her beloved twin brother Lugh, she teams up with daredevil Jack and the Free Hawks, a girl gang of Revolutionaries.

Saba learns that she is a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Saba and her new friends stage a showdown that change the course of her civilization.

Review: (includes minor spoilers)

My coauthor recommended this book when we started writing a dystopian western — which is, I think, what this book can best be categorized as. I received it as part of @mythousandlifetimes’s booklr secret santa from @reading-takes-you-places (much thanks!) and promptly devoured it in less than 24 hours.

This book really has it all. Let me start with the main character — Saba. And 18 year-old girl who, at the start of the book, is living in seclusion with her distant father, annoying younger sister, and twin brother Lugh — who she is completely dependent on. Which is why, when he’s kidnapped and her father is killed, she goes to rescue him.

So, she crosses the desert, fights for her life, denies all comfort, all out of familial love. And the character change. The whole plot is based off of her dependence on her brother, but, as captured so perfectly in the last pages, she becomes her own independent person. Young wrote this change so masterfully, so subtly, that I didn’t fully understand the character change until the end. It was perfect, realistic, and fantastic.

The other characters were another thing I loved about the book. Saba’s younger sister, Emi, who suddenly has to grow up. A gang of completely female fighters (and they’re soooo cool). For once, I even liked the love interest (let’s be real, I shipped it so hard). The villains, who creeped me out one after the next. A deaf boy who I really want to hug, and his adoptive father who I want to marry. Every character we met was so lively, so unique, that it was hard to remember they were just characters.

Finally, the writing style. Young did a daring thing: she forgot grammar. There was not a single quotation mark in the book, ‘g’s’ were abandoned from verbs, it was written in western drawl, phonetically. Which took much less longer than I would think to adjust to.

A few criticisms: A few phrases felt too modern, to colloquial. Which makes sense, as those phrases stuck around. But it still stuck out. Some reactions fell flat, some moments should have been explored more deeply. Saba seemed largely unaffected by her father’s death. She kept letting Emi come with her with relatively little argument, even after she continuously got into danger. Some things just didn’t make sense. Not realizing a certain character wasn’t actually dead (when literally she just had to check it wasn’t hard). Killer worms… with claws (thinking giant worm from spongebob here).Things like this distracted a bit from the story — but not enough to stop me from enjoying it.

Overall, this book gets an A from me. It was just so… different. Beautifully told and structured; I cannot wait to get my hands on the second one. Really, I just want more Saba+Jack moments.

Favorite Quotes:

“I never knew that missin somebody could hurt, I says. But it does. Deep inside. Like it’s in my bones. We ain’t never bin apart till now. Never. I dunno how to be without him. It’s like… I ain’t nuthin.”
“Be careful, Angel, he says. When you stare at a man like that, he’s likely to git any number of number of … innerestin ideas.”

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