Rebel Heart

Starred review from December 3, 2012
In Young's second Dust Lands book, she returns to the gritty world of Blood Red Road and to the gruff, colloquial voice of Saba, a fierce girl living in a bleak, post-apocalyptic future that incorporates elements of the fantasy and western genres. Saba is haunted by the deaths on her shoulders (particularly that of her friend Epona), and she believes she might be going insane. Her rescued twin brother, Lugh, also bears emotional scars from his time in captivity, and the siblings often battle each other as they quest to reach an oasis called the Big Water. Meanwhile, Saba's new love, Jack, discovers that the evil slavers known as the Tonton are rising again, led by someone called the Pathfinder. Young is even more ambitious this time out, interweaving multiple plot threads and narrative voices, and while her stylistic choices do not always result in easy reading (the same stream-of-consciousness style that makes Saba's voice so effective can be awkward when describing Jack's actions in the third person), her immersive storytelling will lure readers deeper into this dangerous, starkly lovely terrain. Ages 14âup. Agent: Gillie Russell, Aitken Alexander.

October 1, 2012
Good post-apocalyptic fiction raises questions about humankind's capacity to learn from its mistakes, but this thinly-plotted second installment of the Dustlands trilogy is not up to the task. Here, the common folk, with all the trappings of peasantry from centuries past, are lifted from their mean lives by shamans, sweat lodges and vision quests. Heroes and heroines rise from the ranks to battle the evil Tonton and their new leader, the Pathfinder, who's set upon slaughtering the old and weak and creating a race of settlers for New Eden. Wrecker civilization has left car-strewn hillsides, imposing concrete buildings and wastelands for Saba and her motley crew to traverse. But Saba, with a price on her head, mostly wants to be left alone to ride west to reunite with her one true love, Jack--although she's tempted by others along the way. Derivative plot elements, from the nine black-robed men on horseback to the Wraithway, are not helped by the progressively garbled syntax that connotes not so much a dialect as the well-worn trope of the noble savage. Saba finds the Wraithway filled with evidence of Wreckers' "earth hate....The skellentons of their buildins. The toppled chimleys," a place haunted by "the spirits of earth an water." Where Blood Red Road (2011) was fast-paced and chaotic, this meandering book just bogs down. (Post-apocalyptic adventure. 12 & up)

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February 1, 2013

Gr 7 Up- Rebel Heart starts where Blood Red Road (S & S, 2011) left off. While Saba, her siblings, and friends travel west to start a new life, they learn that there's a new man looking for her, known as the Pathfinder. He has offered a bounty for Saba because she rescued her brother, Lugh, and killed the Vicar. The vicious Tonton soldiers have regrouped and are grabbing land from Waste settlers to create New Eden-a thriving world the way it was before Wreckers destroyed it. Resistance groups have formed to fight back. Saba's life has become more complicated: there is tension between her and Lugh, she is haunted by strange dreams, and it appears that her love, Jack, has betrayed her. She is further confused because she is also drawn to DeMalo (the Pathfinder). Some readers might find Saba's narrative challenging because of the phonetic spelling, poor grammar, and lack of quotation marks to distinguish who is speaking. Teens will also have to get past the numerous coincidences-which Saba attributes to "Destiny"-such as how the characters manage to find one another so easily without any means of communication. Despite these shortcomings, the book will appeal to fans of the first novel, who will want to learn more about survival in this futuristic wasteland and Saba's bonds with others-particularly the romantic ones.-Sherry J. Mills, Hazelwood East High School, St. Louis, MO

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