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thepessimisticreader 's review for:
Blood Red Road
by Moira Young
This book is easily one of my favourites. It surprised me with it's ability to entertain me while being written in such a unique way. Normally, any grammatical error annoys the hell out of me, but it just works with this story. The chapters are long and very few, with choppy sentences and short scenes. The dialogue is difficult to follow at times because there are no quotations. Somehow, I find that the writing style gives character and greater insight to the world. It's as if it's being told to us from Saba herself years later. As if the whole story is one big dialogue.
There was once a lonely widower who could read the lying stars. He had three children, a set of fraternal twins born on midwinter and a scraggly daughter whose birth murdered her mother. This family lived on a lake suffering from drought. Each day, as the lake shrunk further from the beach, the widower begged the stars to answer him, to tell him when there would be rain. "Tomorrow," they told him every day.
Saba follows her brother Lugh in all that he does, he is the sun to her moon. One day, men come and take Lugh, a midwinter son, as a sacrifice so that a king might live a few more years. It falls to Saba to rescue her brother, along with her kid sister, Emmi. She gains a reputation as a girl who is not to be trifled with, who will do anything to find her way back to Lugh.
Saba is a beautiful character. Strong, loyal, brave. But she has poor taste in men, crows notwithstanding. Her brother, Lugh, is kind of a prick and she holds him in such high regard. She goes to extraordinary lengths to reach him.
Jack is an interesting character, but I find him lacking in the charisma that Saba falls in love with. He isn't half as slick as he thinks he is, and I wouldn't root for them to end up together. Though, Jack's Rule of Three is an interesting concept, save someone's life just three times and they belong to you. I wish there had been more focus on that.
The female characters are really those that stand out to me. Saba herself is kidnapped and forced to participate in cage fights before she encounters a resistance of freedom fighters. It is these women who I admire. Tough, rough, gritty. These women have fought tooth and nail for all that they have.
The story relies heavily on the use of chaal, a drug used by "The Sun King" to keep his slaves obedient. Despite it being a huge part of the story, not a lot is explained about it. I'm unsure if the chaal is highly addictive and used recreationally, or if it is dosed to the population.
There are a lot of interesting concepts all mixed together, specifically star-reading, the Sun King/drug lord, the rule of three, tame crows and blue-eyed wolfdogs, the waste. It's a very well-rounded world. It doesn't tell you specifically how this world came to be, but it gives you a picture. Fallen airplanes, sunken ships, never-ending dunes of Red Waste. I hope these things get more focus in the next books of the trilogy.
Happy reading!
There was once a lonely widower who could read the lying stars. He had three children, a set of fraternal twins born on midwinter and a scraggly daughter whose birth murdered her mother. This family lived on a lake suffering from drought. Each day, as the lake shrunk further from the beach, the widower begged the stars to answer him, to tell him when there would be rain. "Tomorrow," they told him every day.
Saba follows her brother Lugh in all that he does, he is the sun to her moon. One day, men come and take Lugh, a midwinter son, as a sacrifice so that a king might live a few more years. It falls to Saba to rescue her brother, along with her kid sister, Emmi. She gains a reputation as a girl who is not to be trifled with, who will do anything to find her way back to Lugh.
Saba is a beautiful character. Strong, loyal, brave. But she has poor taste in men, crows notwithstanding. Her brother, Lugh, is kind of a prick and she holds him in such high regard. She goes to extraordinary lengths to reach him.
Jack is an interesting character, but I find him lacking in the charisma that Saba falls in love with. He isn't half as slick as he thinks he is, and I wouldn't root for them to end up together. Though, Jack's Rule of Three is an interesting concept, save someone's life just three times and they belong to you. I wish there had been more focus on that.
The female characters are really those that stand out to me. Saba herself is kidnapped and forced to participate in cage fights before she encounters a resistance of freedom fighters. It is these women who I admire. Tough, rough, gritty. These women have fought tooth and nail for all that they have.
The story relies heavily on the use of chaal, a drug used by "The Sun King" to keep his slaves obedient. Despite it being a huge part of the story, not a lot is explained about it. I'm unsure if the chaal is highly addictive and used recreationally, or if it is dosed to the population.
There are a lot of interesting concepts all mixed together, specifically star-reading, the Sun King/drug lord, the rule of three, tame crows and blue-eyed wolfdogs, the waste. It's a very well-rounded world. It doesn't tell you specifically how this world came to be, but it gives you a picture. Fallen airplanes, sunken ships, never-ending dunes of Red Waste. I hope these things get more focus in the next books of the trilogy.
Happy reading!