Release Date: June 7th, 2011
Genre:  Post-apocalyptic
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Pages: 512
Rating:
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Series: Dustlands #1
Summary: 

Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That's fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when a monster sandstorm arrives, along with four cloaked horsemen, Saba's world is shattered. Lugh is captured, and Saba embarks on an epic quest to get him back.

Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the world outside of desolate Silverlake, Saba is lost without Lugh to guide her. So perhaps the most surprising thing of all is what Saba learns about herself: she's a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization.

Blood Red Road has a searing pace, a poetically minimal writing style, violent action, and an epic love story. Moira Young is one of the most promising and startling new voices in teen fiction.

Review: I usually don't include the parts of summaries that say things like "Blood Red Road has a searing pace" etc. etc. since those often seem to be more the opinion of the summary-writer than the truth. But it's important to note the line "a poetically minimal writing style." This is one of those books where there are no quotation marks, and everything is written phonetically. If you've read The Knife of Never Letting Go, the spelling in this book is similar.

At first I was really daunted by this. I wasn't sure if I could handle 500+ pages of no quotation marks and weird spellings. And I'll admit that it did take me a while to read the first 50 pages because I kept going back to make sure I was reading things right. But that's about when the "searing pace" kicked in.

This book flies by. Honestly, I was flipping pages so fast I nearly set fire to the book. It takes nearly 250 pages for Saba to team up with her "handsome daredevil," but it easily seemed like half that. Moira has created a world so gripping that I honestly felt like I could look around and see what Saba was seeing.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that Saba has such an interesting way of seeing the world! She describes her surroundings and the people around her in such a way that you really understand her. It's like when a child looks up at a jet-trail and describes it as "a scar in the sky." You've never thought of it that way, and the child didn't mean to be deep, but it's poetically brilliant. Saba doesn't mean to be deep, but she is, and that makes it all the more wonderful.


Also, I LOVE the ending to this book. Moira doesn't depend on some dramatic cliffhanger to make people feel like OH MY GOSH I HAVE TO HAVE THE SEQUEL RIGHT NOW!!!!! Instead, there's just enough resolved and left unresolved to make you happy to read the next book, not desperate. Quite the feat.

There is mild profanity, and quite a bit of violence. That, along with the fact that the narrator is 18, makes this a book for older teens (Maybe... 15+? But that's up to you and your standards).

The world of Blood Red Road is horrifying, beautiful, heart-wrenching, and hopeful. Truly a masterpiece.



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