Book Review: Blood Red Road

Blood Red Road
Dustlands #1
Author: Moira Young
Pages: 512 pgs
Reading Level: YA
Release Date: June 7th 2011
Review Source: Margaret K. McElderry Books - Simon & Schuster
Available: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Borders 

Summary: (from goodreads) 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.

This a post apocalyptic story written as if they were talking, not being narrated, in a special dialect fitting to the times, at the beginning made the reading kind of frustrating, but grows on you as you read on to make the story feel more appropriate and real.

Saba & Lugh, were 18 year old twins, like night and days in their looks but could not be apart from each other. They were being raised by their Dad and smaller sister Emmi, who Saba blamed for the death of her mother, in a waste land, away from everybody. One day 4 hooded horsemen came out of nowhere to take Lugh away and killed their Dad. Having promised her brother that she will find him and that she will make sure her sister will be safe, she embarks in an adventure where she is forced to grow up and fight for her life and her sister’s. Needless to say, things get complicated and dangerous, she is taken as a slave and forced to fight, but her iron will and love for her brother as well as her sister’s, even as she denies the feeling, gives her the fearless force and intelligence to escape it all. Along the way she meets Jack, who will become her partner in the struggle to find her brother and whom will share a romantic interest as well.

A very fast paced story, with gut wrenching parts, quite a few violent scenes, be aware that in my opinion, this book should be read by the older teens, having said that it also has the sweet and tender romance to give the story balance. It has a good ending, leaving some unresolved points to open the door for the following chapters in the sequel.