Blood Red Road

Blood Red Road, by Moria Young, is a sci-fi book that tells a story of a girl who will do anything to save her brother -- even paint the road red with blood.
       Lugh is the sun, and Saba thinks of herself as his shadow.  He goes first, and she follows.  He only has to ask, and she will do.  But when Lugh is kidnapped and their father is killed, Saba promises to save him -- the only question is how.  She has lived in Silverlake, now a dried lake bed, since they were born and she has never been to the 'outside world'.  Even the neighbors stop by, when they do, not the other way around.  With Saba's mother dead, Saba is saddled with nine-year-old Emmi and an impossible mission.  Without any knowledge of the world outside, each step could be a misstep and their lives are the forfeit for any mistakes.  With the help of a group of girls called the Free Hawks, a cocky thief named Jack, a bar tender, Ike, and his son, Tommo, Saba fights her way to her brother, slowly coming to realize that he doesn't have to be her whole world. 

I know I say this for just about every book, but this book is amazing.  It is written all in dialect, and it has no quotation marks, so sometimes it is hard to differentiate between what is being said and what is being described, but it provides another level to the book, if you know what I mean.  Suddenly, without quotation marks, you seem to be Saba, not be just visiting her head. 
       As a result, you feel Saba's hates, and her love, or at least her hate for Emmi and her love for Jack.  Lugh, well, I can't see why she would care that much about him.  She seems more like an eager puppy dog when he is around, in the beginning of the book, ready to do as he, her master, commands.  But maybe if I had lived there, as my brother's puppy for eighteen years, I would be as dependent on him as she is, but there is still something off about it.  I don't know.  I just don't get it.  But it's okay -- as long as you know beforehand that she is devoted to her brother, you get the sentiment fine.
       I don't really get the reference to Louis XIV.  Not to give anything away, but why would he have the connection that he had with Pinch?  I thought there was a nuclear war and everyone died?  Or is the resemblance just a resemblance?  I don't really understand that, because it is a more science-fiction book than a fantasy tale.
      Oh, and I think the Wreckers are the beings who dropped the nuclear bombs.  Just saying that for clarification, because that was something else I didn't get until the middle of the book. 
        I really wish that they had had a map in the book, because I thought it would've been cool to track Saba's journey.  Then again, I am a real map person, and I really like to see things, so maybe it's just a strange want that would only occur to me. 
      Other than that, this book is awesome.  At some point the characters stop being characters and become real people.  And you stop being you, you start being Saba, a girl on an impossible quest.  After I finished this book I found myself talking in a slight accent, even.  I started to be able to predict the character's actions, and what path they would take based solely on how I knew they reacted in a situation.  And truly, a book like that is fantastic.
       With plenty of blood and gore, Saba, Emmi, and Jack walk their road.  Where it will take them, one can only guess at.  But you wind up being glad that you were able to follow their tracks and walk in their footsteps, if only for a little while.