09 August 2011

Review: Blood Red Road

This book is perfect. PERFECT. One of my favorite of the year, so far. With so many mass-produced dystopian novels being released, it's nice to find a diamond in a pile of crap.

Saba lives in a desolate wasteland with her loony father, twin brother Lugh, and younger sister Emmi. Her whole life, Saba has happily followed in Lugh's shadow until one day, during a dust storm, men on horses show up and kidnap Lugh. Saba decides she has to leave the only home she's ever known to rescue her brother. Out in the world, she discovers a violent people and landscape, a kick-ass group of women, a kick-ass love interest named Jack, and most importantly, how kick-ass she can be on her own.

Saba is one of the strongest female characters in YA fiction right now and I enjoyed watching her grow into her own person throughout the story. I would compare her to Katniss from The Hunger Games series, but Saba would think that's an insult since Katniss tended to be kinda whiny and probably would have died during the first half of this book. I loved the world that Moira Young built, showing a very real and very bleak future for humanity. There's a popular complaint among readers of the book that the prose is too frustrating to read. On the contrary, I found it refreshingly different. The book is written in Saba's dialect and with no quotations around the dialogue. It did take some getting used to, but after a few pages I didn't even notice it anymore and began to enjoy it. I don't know how much closer to Saba you can get than reading the story directly through her. I loved this book and cannot wait for the next one in the Dustland series!

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