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Blood Red Road by Moira Young (view source)
Revision as of 16:25, 10 April 2011
, 16:25, 10 April 2011no edit summary
But that all changes when the Tonton soldiers arrive, abduct Lugh, and kill Pa. Saba finds herself on a quest to rescue him and it will take her through the ruined world left by the Wreckers (that'll be us). She'll endure life as a slave cage-fighter, try and fail to shake off the resented Emmi, fall in with a band of Amazonian women rebels, and see the cost of drug addiction at the closest of quarters. Spikey, quick to judge, full of bravado, she'll also avoid love of every kind until she begins to learn that it's the only thing that can save her - any of us.
Written in a sparse, spare style that fits the bleak setting perfectly, and with a first-person narration that gets us right inside Saba's skin from the very first page, I absolutely loved reading ''Blood Red Road''. The feel is that of a revenge Western - in this book, America's future is as lawless as its mythic past. But Saba gets a great deal across in her chopped-down style and I loved her as a character. The pace is relentless and you feel her urgency in every word. And this ruined future world rises from the pages with a raw and vivid energy. And I can't imagine a single reader that won't fall in love with Nero, the perspicacious crow. It's great stuff, it really is.
I've given ''Blood Red Road'' five stars - this is because it ticks all my favourite boxes: dystopian setting; future catastrophe; pared-down writing; the flashes of sweetness life gives you, no matter how harsh your environment. I love pretty, poetic things in ugly, violent surroundings. They give me hope. But I admit the book isn't perfect. Lugh, the object of the quest, remains pretty much a cipher, and I would like to have seen him fleshed out, even in his absence. Some of the supporting cast are a little bit two-dimensional and the final sequence loses a little bit of momentum through several mini-climaxes rather than one big one.