Review: Blood Red Road by Moira Young

The Premise: The story takes place in the post-apocalyptic future and follows protagonist Saba. She lives with her twin brother Lugh who she is extremely close with and adores, her sister Emmi, who she blames for their mother's death (their mother died in childbirth) and her father Pa. On one tragic day, her brother is taken from her by men cloaked in black on horses, called the Tonton. She sets out to find her brother and bring him home and ends up leaving her home and having to set out into lands that are new to her. She ventures into dangerous territory attempting to find Lugh and goes through a series of trials as well. With many twists and turns along the way, Saba's number one goal is simply reuniting with Lugh and along the way, she encounters the handsome Jack and a group of girls who call themselves the Free Hawks. She also learns of her brother's captives and the reasoning between his disappearance.

My overall thoughts and review: To begin with, the text is written in a phonetic style, very simplistic, so that was a bit difficult for me to get used to at first. Once you get through I would say 20-30 pages.. it does not even bother you anymore because immediately you are immersed in Saba's world. I really liked how fast paced it was and how anything could happen at anytime. There was constant twists and turns and it honestly felt like Saba was not getting a break. She was going through encounter after encounter. The overall story of why Lugh was kidnapped was quite interesting and just the way Young pushed her main protagonist way out of her comfort zone was so enticing; because you see Saba really struggle with everything, but as a strong protagonist, she finds ways to rise above it in the end. I really enjoyed the character of Emmi especially, and when I met Young at a signing, she mentioned that that character was based on her own sister, so that was interesting. Overall, it makes a good stand alone apart from the series, but there was nice set up for what is to come in the series as well. Being dystopian and all, it reminded me of course of other dystopic novels such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, in the sense where the female protagonist is being pushed out of their comfort zone and having to go to great lengths to "grow" as a character. I really liked it, but I did not love it, and I think simply because I did not love Saba as a protagonist. It was interesting to see how her story unraveled, but her as a character, at many times, was really difficult to sympathize with, especially the moments when she displayed just unnecessary hatred towards her sister in contrast to the undying love she had for Lugh. So that was a bit frustrating. But overall, it was a good book and I highly recommend it!

Rating of the book: 4/5 stars.

This book is the first in the trilogy titled The Dust Lands. Reviews for the second and final book will be up soon, so be on the look out for those! :)

Have you read Blood Red Road? What are your thoughts on it?