Maja (The Nocturnal Library)'s Reviews > Blood Red Road

2.5 stars


I believe that, consciously or unconsciously, every author has a list of priorities he/she keeps in mind when writing a book. I know that every reader has priorities/expectations/preferences when choosing what to read. Unfortunately, Moira Young’s priorities and mine are very, very different.

To be perfectly fair here, she didn’t write this book for me. She wrote it for teenagers who have a hard time focusing on anything for too long. And I have to give it to her, the book is an attention gripper from start to finish. It will entertain you as long as you don’t think too hard about it. Because once you start thinking, it all goes down the drain. I also think that Blood Red Road was written for people who need to visualize something clearly in order to enjoy it. I’m not one of those people. I have to feel and then feel some more, and the only thing Saba made me feel was annoyance.


There were so many inconsistencies in Saba’s character. Her life was described as completely isolated, from when she was born until the men showed up and took her twin brother away, shortly after their 18th birthday. Her mother died giving birth to her younger sister Emmi, and for the first 18 years of her life, the only people Saba ever talked to were her father and her brother Lugh. She mostly ignored poor Emmi. Knowing that, her understanding of people’s nature and behavior later in the book really bothered me. She was too insightful for someone who had no experience with other people. I thought about it a lot last night, and then this morning, entirely by accident, I stumbled upon a blog post written by Ann Aguirre in which she addressed this very issue. Her character Deuce (Enclave) also grew up pretty isolated, in a small community that lived underground. Ann was asked about the much hated love triangle she included in the book. This was (part of) her answer:

Her (Deuce's) emotional intuition is pretty close to nonexistent, and she misses cues that seem obvious to us because she's very underdeveloped in that regard. Yes, it's obvious to us that Fade digs her and that Stalker does too, and that by training with him, she's making Fade think she doesn't like him. But Deuce doesn't think in those terms. Stone and Thimble were her closest friends in brat-hood, and she never encountered an either/or situation with them. And that's really her primary source of social experience. She has no romantic history whatsoever.

And that's why Aguirre is one of my favorite authors. If an author wants me to really understand the character, he/she must do the same first.

I know many people had problems with the dialect that was used in this book, but for me, that was the best part. It was extremely well done, very consistent, and it made the rest a little more bearable.

I can’t really recommend this book, but considering how most of my friends rated it, I can’t not recommend it either. All I can say is that I won’t be continuing the series.