Blood Red Road, Moira Young

The day's hot. So hot an so dry that all I can taste in my mouth is dust. The kinda white heat day when you can hear th'earth crack. We ain't had a drop of rain fer near six months now. Even the spring that feeds the lake's startin to run dry. You gotta walk some ways out now to fill a bucket. Pretty soon, there won't be no point in calling it by its name. Silverlake. 


Saba lives in a sheltered world with her family, but it is shattered when her twin brother, Lugh is captured by four cloaked horsemen. Saba sets off into a lawless, wasted landscape left behind by the "Wreckers" (us), along with her younger sister, Emmi (who she blames for their mother's death) to try and rescue her brother. She teams up with a boy named Jack and a gang of girl warriors called the Free Hawks. She's off to save her brother- and possibly her whole world from evil. I really liked the characters of the Free Hawks- they were brave and roguish.This was a deeply disturbing book, which I think was kind of the point, so in that respect, the author succeeded very well.Young's writing style is interesting; as you can see from the opening paragraph, Saba narrates her story in a colloquial, ungrammatical way. I like the idea of this, but it was kind of difficult to get through the book- at first. But it worked well and sounded genuine. This book was sort of similar to The Hunger Games. I did really enjoy this book, once I got used to the writing style. This book actually grew on me as I went on, because the book had really great suspense and buildup. I actually changed my rating from 4.25 to 4.5, to 4.75, to finally, 5 stars.

Read Blood Red Road:

• if you like science fiction and are looking for a great sci-fi read
• if you like female heroines

459 pages.

 

Outstanding Book That Will Stay On My Bookshelf For Rereading (jf I own it)!