Blood Red Road (review)

3.5/5

Warning: First paragraph is poorly written dialect

I spect if I writ this hole review like the books writ you werent read very far. Fortntly for "Blood Red Road" Moira Young aint bad at this writting thang like I am. (Try reading with a twang it might work better).

Really I thought about trying to write the whole review in dialect. In my head it sounded like a good idea but it takes a stronger person than me to purposely misspell words. Please don't hold my poor attempt at dialect against the book. The twangy uneducated language is actually one of the best parts of the book. Young has a gift for making dialect feel natural and preventing it from interfering with the story.

Blood Red Road is a Dystopian Western (at least that's what I'm calling it. I swear in my head Saba's wearing a prairie dress the whole time). Its fast paced and action-packed, a quick fun read. Saba, Lugh, Emmie and her father live in the middle of nowhere. Literally, freaking desert with a dying lake. They're isolated and don't trust outsiders. So when four cloaked horsemen kidnap Lugh (Saba's twin) and kill their father, Saba stubbornly decides she's going to rescue her brother. I'll be honest, for most of this book I thought Saba might be in love with her twin brother. No it doesn't really go there. But trust me, she's so isolated from the world and selfish with her brother's affection that you'll at least ask the question.

This book has a little bit of everything (too much of everything). Kidnapping, cage fighting, giant reptiles, even a musical interlude. The best I can say is that it's fun. The worst I can say is that sometimes it doesn't really make sense.

The only real problem with Blood Red Road is that at times it moves so fast that it forgets about logic. Here are a few examples of what we will call "logic fails"

1. For someone who only knows her brother, her sister and her father Saba seems a little too intuitive about people.
2. Saba is excellent at hand-to-hand combat with absolutely no training. She can even beat experienced fighters.
3. There's a bird that's WAY SMARTER than Saba herself, but there's no magical explanation. (Really I love the bird but logic tells me that it couldn't possibly really exist).
4. There are giant worms that eat people. Except everyone forgets about them and they don't show up when a whole army needs to cross their territory for the final battle.

Honestly if I tore this book apart I could probably find a lot more problems. But I enjoyed this book and don't want to destroy the fun. When you read this book just don't think very hard, preferably not at all. I would recommend this book to a lot of people. It's enjoyable, fast paced, and completely harmless.

It's like the poor-man's Chaos Walking--not as smart and not as much meat. But that doesn't mean this book doesn't have a place. Probably it's biggest pitfall (among my friends) is that it'll draw too many comparisons to Chaos Walking. These books don't have similar ambitions. This book is the equivalent of an action movie whereas Chaos Walking is a thought-provoking art film. Blood Red Road has lots of violence, special effects, a bad boy love interest and that's it. I really don't think it's trying to be anything more.

Blood Red Road succeeds at what it attempts and that's being a fun read. So enjoy a mindless adventure with a dash of cheese, no harm. I'm not ashamed to admit that I did.