Review: Blood Red Road
21:39
By Moira Young
Source: Library
Page count: 459
Genres: Young Adult, Dystopian, Romance, Post Apocalyptic,
Goodreads Synopsis:
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:
I enjoyed this book. I thought it was interesting, different from others of its genre, and had a unique writing style. It took a while to get into - the writing style took time to get into, and the book's beginning was terrible. It was boring and dull, and I was seriously considering stopping reading Blood Red Road because the start was so awful. Though, I persevered through the start, and thankfully, the book picked up. By the middle of the book, I was really enjoying it.
One of the reasons why this book was so good was because of the characters. Saba, the main character, was strong and independent - I really enjoyed reading about her. She was gutsy, and wouldn't let people stand in her way of her chance of saving her brother, Lugh. Probably the reason I liked Saba so much was because she was fierce, and changed throughout the book. At the beginning of the book, she says that if her younger sister, Emmi, had been kidnapped, she wouldn't go to save her: at the end of the book Saba says that now, she definitely would save her. "If it'd bin Emmi they took, he says, Emmi an not Lugh... would you of gone after her?
"When he asked me that question, back at Darktrees, the answer was no. If he asked me agin, if he asked me now, I'd answer yes, Without stoppin to think. Yes" I think this is important to see in a character because it shows the books has meaning - also, it shows that what the character has gone through is worthwhile, because they learnt things from it. I also thinks it means that us, as readers can learn more from the book, because we have been on the same adventure as the characters, so we can learn the same things.
Another reason why Saba - in my opinion - is such an amazing heroine, is because she (although she didn't know it - it's the author's clever writing) wasn't a typical dystopian female heroine. In your average dystopian novel, the girl is the hero, and saves / changes the world for the better. In Blood Red Road, Saba says "I'm here to git Lugh back, not to change the world" which was really the icing in the cake to a seemingly perfect character for me, because it made Blood Red Road stand out from the other books around at the moment. It shows that the character wasn't your average Tris or Katniss, she was her own, and was different, because she changes the world while doing something for other people, and didn't set out to do that. I believe this makes Blood Red Road a different and unique read because the core reason for the book is completely different.
However good my initial thoughts of Saba were, I was highly disappointed with her. I thought she was a strong, determined character, but my expectations of her proved too high.
"I press myself closer. I cain't seem to get enough
Stop, he says aginst my lips
I don't. I don't want to. I cain't.
He grabs both my hands. Saba, he says. Saba, stop"
This outraged me greatly because this just completely doesn't fit in with Saba's character. She is strong minded, and would not kiss somebody while rescuing her brother, let alone not being able to stop and control herself while kissing somebody. In all honesty, I feel like this part was not needed in the book. It didn't add anything, just made Saba go down in my estimation, and actually altered my view of the whole book.
To continue with the theme of sections in the book that shouldn't be in there, some parts of the book feel like they have not been checked over. For example, in the book it says "If I'm lucky, I'll be there in a week. A week, she said, if I'm lucky" which I thought was just bad editing. Both of the lines were not needed in the book.
Overall, I would say this book is OK, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're ready to persevere, because the beginning is bad, but the ending is good.
Rating:
Hello! I'm D - a dog-loving feminist from the UK. You'll probably find me with my nose in a book or playing my clarinet
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