Blood Red Road has been on my TBR for years and I was excited to finally read it. However, once I started, I became skeptical; now that I’ve finished, I can say there was only one thing I liked about the novel. It wasn’t a stereotypical dystopian, about love and rebellion. While there was a romance — more on that later — the story was mainly adventure-focused, centering on rescue and relationships.

Based on the content of other reviews, the formatting and writing style is hit or miss. There are no chapters, only sections and page breaks, and no quotation marks. The dialogue is also unusual, in that words are spelled how they sound rather than how they’re actually pronounced; “ezzack” = “exact” and so on. For me, these things were definitely a miss, though the lack of chapters bothered me significantly less than the other aspects. They made it difficult for me to really lose myself in the story Young is telling.

Another large reason I disliked this novel was the protagonist, Saba. There are unlikeable characters, morally grey characters, and then Saba. She was some ungodly combination of both and I wasn’t a fan. I don’t even know how to describe her, to be honest. She’s ornery and standoffish, past the point of being admirable. I think Young went too far in trying to demonstrate these traits, and ultimately it went south. And while I don’t think anyone will accuse me of being sexist, let it be known that I’d say the same things if Saba were male or nonbinary.

On that note, I didn’t like Jack either. I’m not sure what other people saw in him that they liked. He was an arrogant, insufferable snake. If I’m being completely honest, the only characters I liked were Nero, Emmi, and the Free Hawks — Saba’s pet crow, Saba’s nine year old sister, and a group of girl rebels that went around wreaking havoc. The protagonist? The love interest? Nah.

If I didn’t like the protagonist or the love interest, I’m sure you can figure out that I didn’t like the romance either. Normally I’m all over hate-to-love, but not this time. They truly seemed to hate each other and I wasn’t fond of either one of them, so no. Thank u, next. (Maybe His Fair Assassin has ruined all other heterosexual ships for me, haha.)

In many aspects, I felt this novel had an interesting premise but was poorly executed. Much of the story dragged, in my opinion, with a fair portion of it being journeying or planning. There were some fights, including some cage fights that took an entire section of the novel. I also questioned the necessity of some events, such as the hellwurms and everything following Lugh’s rescue. The latter would’ve been better suited to the beginning of book two, in my opinion.

Lastly, this book left me with a number of questions when I closed the cover.

1. Where’s the world-building? It doesn’t have to be the focal point, but it should at least be present. Occasionally there were mentions of Wreckers and Wrecker technology; I assume that’s slang for humans of past generations, which means the story is set on Earth. But where and when is the story set? How did we get to that point? What’s going on? Dystopians don’t just happen! Give me details!

2. Is there magic? There’s no mention of magic explicitly, but early on Saba talks about how her father tries to read the stars. However, there’s no proof of whether or not that works. Then there’s the heartstone, a necklace given to her by a family friend said to belong to her late mother that heats up when the wearer is near their heart’s desire. But how does it know? How and why does it exist in this world? Is it one of a kind? If Saba didn’t know her heart’s desire, how did this stone?

3. There’s a king, but hardly any information given about him or the land he rules over. How did he become king? What areas is he king of? Does he do anything, or just sit back while his citizens are drugged and enslaved, living a luxurious life and ignoring their struggles?

4. Where are all of the people? There are seven locations mentioned in the novel. Two of them are completely unpopulated, two more are only occupied by a handful of people, and another is only populated by the Free Hawks. That leaves two that are full of people, but no other locations are mentioned. Surely there are more people in the world? Wildlife? But if there are, I don’t know about them. Sure, that’s not relevant to the storyline, but it would be really easy to mention in passing. If there was even a simple map, I’d be satisfied. I don’t think I’m asking for a lot.

I think that’s everything. I hope this review doesn’t come across as harsh, as that truly wasn’t my intention. There were simply a multitude of elements I didn’t like, with no real positives to combat that. And yes, I realize Blood Red Road was published in 2011, but I don’t think that’s a justifiable reason for all of these issues. I mean, Grave Mercy was published in 2012, and while the two novels are enormously different, the latter has none of the aforementioned issues. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Admittedly, I’m a tad curious about what goes down in the sequel, but I love myself enough to skip it.

Representation:
• Tommo, a minor character introduced about two-thirds of the way into the novel, is deaf.

CW: blood, gore, violence, kidnapping, slavery, drugging