Nocturnal Book Reviews

4.5/5
I'm not surprised that Blood Read Road lived up to all the hype around it. It's a marvellous book whose style is very similar to the one in The Reapers are The Angels by Alden Bell. Raw, rough, very simplistic but nonetheless powerful.

Somehow from reading the synopsis I expected Saba to be be a teenager, but she is eighteen, and the issues she is dealing with are those of young woman however immature she appears to be in the beginning.

If any of you remember Mad Max or the more recent The Book of Eli, the world building here is very similar, - people live like savages, death rate is astronomical, psycho killers rule, technology forgotten, the knowledge of the past is unreachable simply because nobody teaches people to read. Those who can read and have access to the books have certain power.

The book doesn't say what happened to the era of technology, but calls people of the past Wreckers. I assume that somehow we as civilisation messed up and most of the humans died.

Saba lives in the middle of the desert with her crazy dad, her twin brother and a little sister. When her twin Lugh is forcefully taken by city dwellers and her dad is killed, she will do anything to bring Lugh back.

The rest of the book is an incredibly difficult journey of two sisters, surreal, harsh and breathtaking at the same time.Captured, enslaved, forced to fight in cages like an animal for the pleasure of drugged out if its mind crowd, Saba determined to do no matter what to save her sister and get to Lugh.

There is wealth of amazing characters in this book - Saba herself, charming, mischievous Jack who becomes Saba's unwelcome friend. De Milo who is an absolute enigma. A silent enemy with mysterious powers, he doesn't appear on the pages more than couple of times, but when he is there he dominates it. Free Hawks, the mad King...

For all the simplicity of the writing, the plot is captivating, there is an undeniable chemistry between Jack and Saba, and even Emmi is adorable most of the time.

The end, although not a cliffhanger, becomes a beginning of another journey which feels oddly appropriate, and the characters stay in your memory for a long time.

I heartily recommend Blood Red Road to any fan of dystopia.

Similar books:

The Reapers are The Angels by Alden Bell