Dust Lands: Blood Red Road Review

Author: Moira Young
Title: Dust Lands Series (Book One) Blood Red Road


GoodReads 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.

My thoughts:

The first thing that drew me into reading this book was the cover. It’s red, the silhouette of the girl is strong and beautiful at the same time, it is an extremely alluring cover.  I’m not going to lie, I totally judge a book by its cover, I mean who doesn’t? At first anyways… So when I happened to fall in love with the cover, and the story line seemed amazing, I dove right into it…and stopped at about the second sentence.

The hardest part to get past in this book isn’t the annoying main character who needs to grow a backbone; Saba is super strong, passionate towards her family, and a pretty clear thinker. Which makes for an awesome main character, even though at times I wanted to scream at her to just accept the help being offered.  It wasn’t the background characters that weren’t fully developed, each member of the little group added to the story extremely well. It wasn’t because it was set at an agonizing slow pace (those books kill me o_O); Blood Red Road had enough action and even a little romance that filled me.

It was the dialect. It is one thing for a few characters to speak a certain way, or even all of them, but the whole book was written in this southern like dialect. I’m not a Grammar Nazi going on and on about misspellings or a need of commas, it’s just the dialect is a little overwhelming at first. I’m not joking when I say I stopped at the second sentence. I even flipped through a few pages to see if it went on, which it does, throughout the whole entire book. Which proved to be a major road block, I’ll honestly say I was a little discouraged when I saw how it was written, and at first it just seemed annoying. So after staring at the cover for about ten minutes and getting really depressed because I had such high hopes for this book (it’s SUCH a pretty cover), I decided to do a review check and see if it was worth finishing.

It totally is. I’m so happy I got over the weird dialect thing and just pushed through and finished this book. It was a seriously amazing book, the critics aren’t lying when they rant and rave about it. Like I said before Saba is awesome, she’s put in a million different impossible situations and she keeps forcing herself to keep getting back up again. The thing I liked most about this book was the fact that it all made sense. It’s not one of those ‘main character gets stuck and everything they try fails then POOF! Everything is perfect.’ Saba actually waits, and works, to get where she is. She, along with her younger sister Emmi (whom I was so happy actually played a large part in this book,) go on this awesome and painful adventure to get their brother back from the evil King. They make some really cool friends along the way, and have to put up with a slightly secretive, a little ignorant, dark haired, super handsome know-it-all Jack. I’m more for action and adventure than romance, but I think it helped move the book nicely.

My favorite part had to be the end- not saying that in a bad way. It left off in a clean note with all the questions answered and mysteries solved, I really can’t stand cliff-hangers and I was so glad that Blood Red Road didn’t have one. I am awaiting the sequel Rebel Heart which will coming out in the US October 30^th, not too far away.  Overall I think Blood Red Road is a good enough read to get past that annoying little dialect issue, some people may even think it adds character to the book. So, if you’re willing to look past that pick up Blood Red Road ASAP and get to reading! You won’t regret it.

My rating on this book: 4 out of 5.