Blood Red Road by Moira Young

There are several things that pop in my mind when I think dystopia. First thing of course, is government control. Second thing that runs through my head is a list of dystopian novels: 1984, Brave New World, Little Brother, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid's Tale etc. etc.

You may have noticed my version of dystopias most always involve government control and the fight to overturn it. That's because I like a good intellectual fight of average man versus the greater powers! Yet, there is the other side of dystopias. The Mad Max's' of dystopias. The Cormac McCarthy dystopia.

This is one of those. Blood Red Road has a wonderful post apocalyptic setting. Even better, you don't know why there was a grand destruction of civilization! You just know that the technologically advanced are referred to as Wreckers. Which seems to rather point to who is at fault.

Saba lives with her twin brother Lugh, little sister Emmi, and her Pa on the edge of a dried up lake. They've always lived there. Interaction with other humans is limited to a handful of people. Pa says that the world outside is a bad place, and it's better to avoid it. Then the worst happens and Saba is thrown into the unknown in order to try and save her brother.


“Lugh goes first always first an I follow on behind. An that's fine. That's right. That's how it's meant to be.” 


I think this is a great read for people who enjoyed the main character Katniss from The Hunger Games. Saba is irascible and almost heartless at times. Almost. Which leaves plenty of room for character development. Which is always nice to have! Flat characteristics are totally for male protagonists. 


I  picked this up because someone recommended it if you had a fondness for The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. I can see why that may be. There's overwhelming odds, fantasy, and a fight for the right and good!


Fans of YA fantasy, dystopians, or just good characters should pick this up and give it a read. 

Borrowed World and Borrowed Eyes With Which to Sorrow It.

In Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the reader is confronted with an alien world. Post-Apocalyptic and utterly devastated, the world as we know it is gone. The new world is hostile, some might say fallen -- it is a place veiled, always, in the pall of ash and dirt, where no plants or animals can even hope to live, and the human population fares little better. Those who haven't killed themselves turn to their only other viable option -- cannibalism. In a world where no one is friend and every solitary day is a struggle for survival, what do morals--love thy number, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not eat thy neighbor's face--even mean?

Turns out, a lot -- at least to the nameless narrator and his son. The book follows the nameless man and his child as they try to survive another day in a world that doesn't bear survival. Through their struggles to find food, shelter, and ever more ingenuous ways to avoid being captured and eaten by other survivors, they are faced with questions that seem unanswerable: are there things more important than survival? What are they? And in a world like this, does any of it matter?

He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

Yet the man and the boy come to find that, perhaps, it is those fragile beliefs that keep them human, keep them utterly different from the cannibals that have thrown all aside in favor of physical survival. Perhaps the world they are in isn't worth their struggle, but those other things are.

McCarthy's writing is both rich and sparse: passages of breathtaking, metaphorical prose are integrated and juxtaposed with simple, terse description of actions and events. Despite the radical premise of the story, the action-arc isn't explosive -- it's basic, realistic (whatever that means in a place like that) descriptions of every day actions necessary for survival.

What I found remarkable about the book was that despite its radical, nearly unimaginable setting, it still forced me to think about the same questions the narrator posed. Those aren't questions purely reserved for a post-Apocalyptic world, they are for the here, now, and everyday. There were certainly sections in the story that made me cringe and turned my stomach (hi, People Pantry?), sections that felt slightly gratuitous in their shock-value, so I would definitely advise caution for the weak of stomach. But overall I recommend it as a really interesting read with some beautiful writing and thought-provoking questions.

Back to the Future, Indeed

Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America is the dystopian novel of the past. Roth doesn't write about the possibility of future horrors -- he writes about the horrors that might have been.

This novel is written in a unique way -- as the fictional autobiography of the author. Using his own name, his own family, and his own childhood community as the setting, Roth embarks on this "what if" dystopian view of history.

For instance: what if, say, Roosevelt lost the 1940 presidential election? What if, instead, Charles A. Lindbergh won?

Such is the premise for The Plot Against America. Lindbergh's election launches America into a time of "perpetual fear" for the nation's Jews. Under his leadership, America never enters World War II. It does not aide Britain. It tries to isolate itself from the chaos reigning in the rest of the world -- that is, until Lindbergh buddies up with Hitler himself.

We see the deterioration of nation, community, and family through the eyes of seven-year-old Phillip, the eyes of a child. Who else could be more affected by the shape of history? As Roth writes --

".. Harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforseen is what the science of history hides, turning disaster into an epic."

Roth takes us right into that terror, into that uncertainty, by reshaping the course of history, and showing it to us through the eyes of a child powerless to stop it.

The narrative switches between Phillip's first person perspective, and the omniscient perspective of a Roth describing historical events. Chapters move between Phillip's family and neighborhood sphere to a more global sphere, in order to get a clearer picture of the world Roth is creating. At first it seems an odd move to make, a bit forced and awkward, but as the book progresses Roth makes the style his own and gets it to work quite nicely.

The major criticism I have of this book, however, is the ending. Throughout the entire novel, Roth makes a point of showing us how any alteration in history can drastically effect the present. It's the domino effect -- one thing changes, and everything else follows. But, despite this point which is manifested in the very premise of the book, he chooses to end it how? By tying it right back up with the present. He conveniently brings an end to every historical alteration he had so meticulously created, so that the end of the book is congruous with the present as we know it.

Why? It defeats the very purpose of the book. And if it's obviously a work of fiction, does it really need to match up with today's reality? I think not.

Even given this disappointing ending, however, this is a definitely a book worth reading. Roth knows his stuff -- literary and historical.