Last year I read Blood Red Road, the hefty first part of a new trilogy by debut author Moira Young, and was so disappointed when it ended and I was going to have to WAIT for part two. I also went ahead and pushed it on everyone I knew, so they could be just as disappointed – you’re welcome, everyone. But! I’ve just finished Part Two… and now I’m in just the same state of anticipation again. Will I learn some day? Not likely.
Rebel Heart
Dust Lands 2
by Moira Young
Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 978 0 385 67186 6
At the end of the last book, we find Saba in love with a boy, a huge victory accomplished, and a few losses incurred on the way weighing on her. She is off to meet Jack again, traveling westward with her brother and sister and Tommo, who has teamed up with them. In typical Saba fashion, she is impatient to reach her goal, driving forward and completely focused, at least until they began to realize that things in the world are changing, and a new regime headed, it seems, by an old enemy, is moving things in a whole new direction.
When Saba receives a message from Jack, she tries to leave her family to their journey and take off on her own to meet him, but finds that they won’t leave her to her own devices so easily. Instead, she ends up dragging them along on a tense dash in questionable company through land controlled by headhunters and Tonton – who are looking for her, as there is now a price on her head.
Luckily for her, she falls into the right hands, but when she arrives and Tonton descend, she loses her sister and discovers a betrayal that cuts her to the heart. Unthinking, she runs, and her return finds trust broken. On the mission to find her sister Emmi, things don’t quite go according to plan either, and she finds herself at the close unsure of herself on many fronts and torn about where she belongs and what her future might hold, even as she and her circle seem to have taken down the headquarters of this new regime.
This novel was just as fast-paced and gripping as the last, and even though Saba makes mistakes, I still desperately wanted things to come out right for her. The final scene was achingly beautiful, and left me both touched and totally annoyed that I can’t continue this trilogy for a while yet.