Blood red road

Well, I don't think I can finish this one. I'm about 75% of the way though and honestly, I'm bored. It's not exactly bad, it's just boring.

Part of the problem I think, is the setting. The book is set in a post apocalyptic society, where modern society no longer exists for a none specific reason (they keep blaming "wreckers" but nothing other than the name is discussed). The trouble is it could have been anywhere.

The post apocalyptic setting has played no role other than there being no rapid means of transportation. You could have easily set this story in the Wild West, or even modern times if you made a plausible reason that they couldn't use trains, plains and cars (no money perhaps). I kept hoping that a the setting might offer some original challenges beyond having to walk a long way, but it just didn't happen - a radiation storm or poison rivers or something.

There didn't even seem to be much rationing of food and water or hunting going on.

Then there were the characters. Normally I'm a massive fan of the ass kicking girl heroine, but for some reason I just didn't connect here. In a large part I think this is because a large chunk of her becoming who she is is chopped out.

The moment when Saba becomes the "Angel of Death" in the cage fights in Hope Town you hear about her first fight, then we get "And then months later" and she's a super bad-ass. For me from this point on I was disconnected from Saba. If I had seen how she had become detached and a fighter I think I would have empathised with her more - instead I saw her as a snappy grump.

The other characters in the book seemed equally flat. The love interest was obvious, and to be honest a bit of a dick, without any particular reason to be. We also see the trope of people randomly starting following the lead, I think this was supposed to show she was a natural leader, but it just seemed like random people were showing up.

I think that this book would have been great if it had just been her becoming bad-ass cage fighter in Hope Town, with a grand finale of her escaping to continue her search for her brother. Then there would have been lots of time to develop the love interest and give her character some more depth. We might have even seen her sister develop into a cunning but overlooked trickster, rather than the expected "I'm good at stuff but you never want to take me anywhere" broken record that she was.

I probably sounded like I hated this book from all that. I didn't really, I just failed to connected with the characters in this story, which transformed it from something exciting and fast paced to a bit of a drag with predictable situations, and expected lines.