The Daily Monocle

Books--especially YA coming-of-age tales--are often touted as literary journeys. And some, in the most cliched ways, are actual journeys or quests. But rarely does one come across a book like Blood Red Road, which is, in fact, a YA journey novel that avoids the cliche trap.

Brought up in the post-apocalyptic settlement of Silverlake, Saba has lived the whole of her eighteen years in the shadow of her twin brother, Lugh. All of that changes when Lugh is kidnapped by four horsemen arriving in a cloud of dust. Suddenly Saba finds herself on a mad quest to rescue her brother, but she’ll have to brave enslavement, combat, and a host of other obstacles first.

Blood Red Road by debut author Moira Young is visceral, harrowing, and helps fill the battle-shaped gap left by a market saturated with glossy dystopians.

The story itself is in quest-format, but the plot is fresh. How? Young has landed her protagonist in a dusty, ugly post-apocalyptic world that’s part future-esque, and part old west. It isn’t glossy--it isn’t glamorous--and because it is admittedly dark, sets itself apart from other novels on the same shelf.

Young also chooses to take the literary high road, so to speak, and allows her story to operate on two different planes. Rather than falling for the YA device of dumbing her story down, or over explaining, Young respects her readers enough to allow Blood Red Road’s quest factor to operate on both a psychological and physical plane.

Young’s characterization skills are powerful, exhibited in polar personalities as the elusive Lugh, and the rogue, pirate-like Jack. Even Saba herself begins Blood Red Road unlikeable, ungainly and insecure. But by the end of the book, Saba’s strength rivals that of every YA heroine on the shelves.

The only downfall here is the dialect in which Young chooses to write. This self-imposed “limit” doesn’t cripple the story by any means, but the book could’ve been even better had the author allowed herself a more extensive vocabulary and educated manner of speaking. The strange, often intentionally misspelled slang will snag readers who are used to the way words look and feel, and comes across gimmicky, rather than as a point of strength.


They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but Moira Young takes that saying to a new level with Saba and her story. Blood Red Road is daring, different, and challenges its YA contemporaries to raise the bar.

She triumphed in The Hunger Games. Against unspeakable odds, she returned victorious in Catching Fire. She is the face of a rebellion she never dreamed existed, and carries the weight of her people on her shoulders.

She is Katniss Everdeen, and she's back in Mockingjay, the third installment of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy.


In this dark conclusion to the series that captivated the young adult audience at large, we find Katniss in a situation that is hauntingly foreign. As the mockingjay—the poster child for the District 13 rebellion—Katniss tries to live her life as it was before she participated in the hunger games. But with Peeta captured by The Capitol, and Gale attempting to forge a tentative romance, she finds solace only in solitude. To make matters worse, political tensions are mounting in District 13, and full-on war is progressing against The Capitol.

The foreign element from this story comes from the lack of the hunger games themselves. Many readers felt like Catching Fire simply rehashed its predecessor, but I think that "the games" was this element I was looking for in Mockingjay. The games themselves—as twisted and askew as they may be—are what initially drew readers to Collins' trilogy, and without them, Mockingjay is, admittedly, weaker.

Instead of the slightly off-kilter dystopian of the previous books, Mockingjay is a dark tale of post-war trauma. Of people who die a little inside, and never completely live again. Katniss finds herself thrust time and time again into situations where she could be happy, but she finds it impossible to rebuild her life. The only time she feels like herself is when she's in the middle of the war.

Collins' characterization is… difficult to define, mainly because the characters have changed so much between Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Prim is no longer the naïve thirteen year old; Finnick isn't the falsely arrogant Adonis; Peeta isn't the sweet, if misguided boy we've come to love, and Katniss herself is raw. Hollow. And yet she trudges on. These new qualities in her behavior are exhibited especially towards the end of the novel when she makes decisions that the reader will doubt. She acts as our all-too-human narrator.

The prose in Mockingjay is in the same style as the other books—very simple, first-person, present tense, but not condescending. However, the story goes from merely violent and fantastic, to dark and foreboding. This is not a kid's story anymore. This is something darker. Grittier. This is, for all intents and purposes, the story of a young soldier who is suffering from post-war trauma.

I'm afraid that Collins will lose some of her readers with this novel. However, at the same time, I think she'll gain a new audience. Mockingjay is more of a post-war story of existence, than a conclusion of redemption. And the bittersweet taste that it leaves behind will linger.

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Don't forget to read our interview with author, Alden Bell!

I never thought a zombie novel would make me cry. But, The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell did just that.

It's been a quarter of a century since the zombie apocalypse, and the ravaged Earth is the only home fifteen year old Temple has ever known. Years after losing the only people she loved, she wanders the bleak landscapes where hunt or be hunted is the only option

But when Temple kills a man in self-defense, she finds herself up against an entirely new sort of enemy. The ruthless Moses Todd will avenge his brother's death regardless of the costs. And so Temple finds herself on the run, caught between a man, the zombies, and the knowledge of her past sins.

This struggle is part of what makes Temple so realistic. She believes that she is truly evil, and carries this burden with her during her travels. In her short life, she's seen more death—caused more pain—than most of us could ever imagine. She lives a harsh, cruel existence, but it's the only existence she's ever known.

I've asked myself over and over again if Temple could be considered human by today's standards. She is a new creature, of a new species so profoundly different—and yet so strikingly similar—to our modern day selves, that we as readers become captives to her plight. She acts as though she is ten or twenty years older than she really is, and that in itself is kind of unnerving. Part of the power of Reapers, is the fact that everything feels so ordinary, that we can't help but believe whatever Bell tell us.

The Earth is just a shell filled with cutthroats, hunters, and people who are afraid to look out their windows, and Bell's prose captures this flawlessly. I can't quite explain the texture of his writing. Haunting. Lyrical. Macabre. Southern poetry, perhaps? He paints a bleak, but beautiful, picture of the empty Earth, and the light of life that struggles to survive inside. And although the offbeat present-tense, limited third-person view point takes a few pages to get used to, it's well worth the effort.

The Reapers are the Angels is different than any other zombie book saturating the market today. It's not a tale of valiant soldiers defending the public from an onslaught of undead monsters; it's not a tale of tortured scientists attempting to redeem themselves after unleashing madness on humanity. Heck, it's not even about the apocalypse itself. Rather, it's a riveting account of humans who become refugees in their own world.

Whereas a lot of zombie books are comical, Reapers is harsh. I wish I could conjure the language I need to properly discuss this book, but every time I try, the words escape me. Fans of World War Z, Edgar Allan Poe—fans of horror, sci-fi, guts and gore—literary muses and geeky teenagers alike: this book is for you. This is one of those books that could almost be considered YA lit—but ten times better, written without the condescension, simplicity and fluffiness of what you usually see in teen literature.

Like I said, I never thought a zombie novel would make me cry. But, thanks to its raw emotion and clarity, The Reapers are the Angels did just that.

The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell hits the shelves on August 3rd. Mark your calendars!

Author's Website
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Posted on July 19th, 2010