Category Archives: Moira Young
Top Ten Tuesday
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted for us book blogger types by the Broke and the Bookish. They provide a topic, and all of us participants post our answers on our blogs and we hop around checking out one another’s answers! This week’s topic is:
Follow Friday!
Each week, the wonderful and beautiful Parajunkee and Alison Can Read host a meme for book bloggers to help us connect with one another and accrue followers! Both host blogs feature a book blog and has a question for all of us to answer.
Q: What book would you love to see made into a movie or television show and do you have actors/actresses in mind to play the main characters?
I really want Moira Young’s Blood Red Road to be adapted into a movie. (You can check out my review of Blood Red Road HERE) I think that with the rising popularity of other dystopian novels that Blood Red Road would be a great bet for most studios to work on. Now, for the actors/actresses to possibly bring to life some of my favorite characters…that is a very difficult question. The only one I can concievably cast from the picture in my mind is Jack, and I picture him similar to Mark Salling from Glee. Salling has the dark skin tone that would accompany a person living in the hot desert air, and he has the body build to match Jack’s description. Obviously he would have to get rid of that ridiculous mohawk. Saba is infinitely hard for me to dreamcast, and I think I’d prefer an unknown in her role.
What book do you want turned into a movie/TV Show?
While you are here…enter to win an Advanced Reader Copy of Saundra Mitchell’s The Springsweet!
Waiting on Wednesday
Jill over at Breaking the Spine hosts a weekly bookish meme for all of us fabulous book bloggers to participate in…to name a book that we are eagerly waiting to be released!
My pick: Rebel Heart (Dust Lands #2) by Moira Young.
The Tonton have been defeated. Lugh has been rescued.
The heartstone has brought Saba and Jack together.
Now, Saba and her family head west to meet him and start a new life. All should be well.
But shadows of the dead are stalking Saba.
And another kind of shadow is creeping over the dustlands.
Then a messenger shows up.
With news of Jack.
I absolutely ADORED Blood Red Road (Dust Lands #1), you can see my review HERE, so I cannot wait until the release of Rebel Heart!
What are you waiting for?
Poll: Favorite Book of 2011
Wow! As you may have noticed, Colleen Houck has pulled ahead by a LARGE number of votes for the top read of 2011!
Book Review: Blood Red Road by Moira Young
Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That’s fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when a monster sandstorm arrives, along with four cloaked horsemen, Saba’s world is shattered. Lugh is captured, and Saba embarks on an epic quest to get him back.
Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the world outside of desolate Silverlake, Saba is lost without Lugh to guide her. So perhaps the most surprising thing of all is what Saba learns about herself: she’s a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization.
Blood Red Road is a wonderful example of how important world building is when writing a dystopian or post apocalyptic novel. Young does a great job of establishing the state of Silverlake and the plight of Saba’s family without dragging out the description for an exorbitant number of pages. Not only does Saba take a physical journey throughout the novel, but a personal one. We see her go from being the follower to a powerful leader, from a completely callus character to an empathetic one.
The characterization in this novel is exemplary, and as a reader I felt that I truly knew the pain Saba felt with the loss of Lugh and her father. I love how realistic it is that Saba would have trouble accepting her younger sister, whose life took their mother’s in childbirth. I love Emmi (the sister), but I think it is a vital part of Saba’s growth as a character and adult to witness the relationship with her previously shunned younger sibling blossom. In fact, it is better in this novel than most because it is a constant throughout the book. Young continues to show the stutter steps that Saba takes to repair her sisterly relationship with Emmi.
Jack. What do I say about Jack? I think that he has so many secrets that the reader is yet to be exposed to, and I was expecting him to pull out a heartstone of his own once he admitted how he felt about Saba. (Maybe he has one, who knows?) He is a great example of a character that is strong, caring, and clever.
Again, I cannot praise Young enough for her use of secondary characters. Every single secondary character had a purpose within the narrative, and not one of them is a waste of pages and description. The Free Hawks, especially, I was expecting to be somewhat expendable based on the nature of their livestyles, but Young proved me wrong. I love when a writer does that.
I will say that if you have trouble reading books written in dialect– a la Huckleberry Finn– then this book might be hard for you to get into. However, once you continue reading, the dialect becomes so intertwined with the novel that it helps bring it to life.
Definitely looking forward to the next installment. 5 Bards.