Blood Red Road

by Moira Young is raw, arid, grit in your eyes compelling and it drags you into a world of hopeless, praying the main characters will be left with their bodies complete and a shadow of soul left to nurture. Four horsemen kick the story into life by kidnapping Lugh, Saba’s twin brother, and the son of a desperate man the horseman, thankfully put down like a wounded dog. Saba vows to rescue her brother but there’s a little sister, a bothersome thing whose birth nine years earlier was the death of their mother. Emmi is her name and untrainable stubborn she proves to be. With a crow stealing the best scenes the threesome head out into a waste land so bereft of life you got to wonder how many apocalypses it takes to reduce a world to nothing. They are captured and transported to a thunder dome type world where Saba has to fight daily to the death, but she learns the location of lugh’s prison and his imminent sacrifice at the hands of an immortal King. In between the scrapping, a task Saba has a natural feral talent, she befriends an all female troop called the Free Hawks and fights against an all consuming love for fellow cage fighter Jack. Did I like this story? Oh yeah, I liked it a lot. Just a quick point to put out there. If Saba met Katniss in a fight I reckon Saba would cream the girl from district twelve easy. Hand to hand combat that is. I mean don’t let Katniss anywhere near a bow and quiver stuffed with arrows. Roo