Rebel Heart (Dust Lands) (edition 2012)

I think I'll get so much more out of this book if I don't read it with a house full of people who think I should be socializing with them instead of reading and do all they can to distract me.

That said, the dialect wasn't distracting this time around, but was lovely, almost poetic in its sparseness. Saba was a hard person to like in the beginning of the first novel, but I felt for her from the start in Rebel Heart. I can't say the same for her beloved brother Lugh, who seemed to have a great big stick up his nether regions for the entirety of the novel, but that only made me sympathize more for Saba.

My qualms with the novel? Jack is featured on the cover, but he was barely a presence in the book. I need more Jack and I suspect Saba does too. ( )

After rescuing her twin brother from the Tonton, Saba experiences disturbing telepathic visions while being hunted by a cunning enemy. ( )

Loved it. Loved the laconic, post-apocalyptic cowboy language, the twists in the action, the way everything became murkier and more uncertain, and the way in which both the heroes and villains became more complicated. ( )

Characters: The main character is still Saba, but she is still surrounded by family and her group of rebel friends. Lugh, her twin brother is a little upset with her and her desire to find Jack instead of moving forward with their lives. Saba and Lugh will butt heads several times throughout the novel.

Originality: This series is absolutely one of the most unique reads you will find in Young Adult books today. Mostly due to the dialect of the characters and the minimal writing style the author has chosen to use. The combination leads to a very unique read.

Plot: Saba gets a coded message from Jack and decides to go and find him against the advice of Jack. The whole group follows Saba knowing that they must stick together and they want to help her. Through their travels they come across several people and different encounters with trouble. But when they reach their destination we find that maybe Saba has a destiny, something she never would have considered before and never expected.

Writing: “Not jest wagons, lone travelers too. We found the leftover bits of one fella. Well, Nero did. Dead eaters had bin at him, jackals an vultures, so you couldn't tell much. Jest his hair color an boot size. The boots was good an they fit Tommo. You never felt right, takin from the dead. But he wouldn't be doin no more walkin an Tommo would. We piled rocks over what was left of him and Lugh said a few respeckful words.”

Krista's Rating:One thing that stood out more to me in this book than the first was the dialect. It was harder for me to get back into the story. But I found that listening to the audiobook was a lot easier to picture the story instead of reading the words as written.
The books have a similar feel to them. Something happens in the beginning to get them on their travels. They come across several different characters and trials along the way and the books end with a bang and several revelations. I can see a pattern here with this series, but with the events in the end of this book, I cannot wait to see where the next book takes us. I have really high hopes for what Saba can become. She's strong, smart and has heroine written all over her. ( )

Rebel Heart by Moira Young is the second in the YA Dustlands series, following the breakout success, Blood Red Road. The latter got these kind of comments:

"Blood Red Road is an eerie and adventurous dystopian fantasy on par with Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games and Paolo Bacigalupi's Shipbreaker" - LA Times

"A natural for Hunger Games fans." - Publishers Weekly (red star review)

"Fans of The Hunger Games's Katniss will find in {Saba} similar reserves of hidden good nature and ferocious fighting abilities . . . Young has leveraged an intriguing action-romance story into a Mad Max-style world that'll have readers both satisfied and eager for more." - Booklist

In the first one Saba fought to rescue her twin brother Lugh in Plague Town and took on the "mad king", acquiring her nickname "Angel of Death" in the process. This one starts a few weeks after that, as she and other survivors try to travel west to the fabled and paradisiacal land of "Big Water". To do so, they have to cross dangerous Mad Max-like territories. At the same time, Saba wants to find romantic interest Jack, a formerly unreliable adventurer who may or may not have reformed. She is haunted by what happened in the first book, including those she had to kill and mistakes she believes she made.

This book is more concerned with romantic conflicts (Saba in particular has multiple suitors), and therefore doesn't achieve the action drive of the first volume. At the same time, it digs deeper into the characters than the first book did. Saba believes she is losing track of her identity and purpose, and needs the help of young "Sky Speaker" Auriel to sort some of it out. Meanwhile, charismatic DeMalo has reorganized the "Tontons", essentially a gang of ruthless mercenaries, to "cleanse" the environmentally plagued land, recruit new members, and give them a new beginning in the Eden he envisions. The old and the weak need not apply for residency; only the young, healthy and strong will have a place. Everyone helping Saba is at the same time struggling with the consequences of what happened in the first book. Her twin was damaged during his time imprisoned by the Tontons in ways he won't share, and others, like Saba, grieve for those they lost and experience guilt that they survived when others didn't. As to key character Jack, is he out for himself, or a traitor, or something else entirely?

The author doesn't try to recreate the success of the first book. She changes up what has come before and its significance, taking risks with her characters and showing she has a clear vision of where this story is going, even as she takes the reader through one unexpected twist and turn after another. This second book doesn't reach the heights of the first one, in my view, but it is a well done, intriguing follow up that has me looking forward to finding out what's up the road.

A couple of excerpts:

(A memory from growing up): "I tug on Pa's shirt. Pa? You never said. What'm I gonna be? Good or bad?

He kisses the top of my head. Whispers in my ear, so's only him an me can hear.

You, my darlin daughter, are gonna be something else entirely."

"Jack pulls up his horse. He breathes in. A long, deep, grateful breath. He drinks in the view. On the cleared valley floor, a small lake glints in the sun. Beside it stands a junkshack with a bark and sod roof, the rest of it cobbled together from Wrecker trash, stones, dried mud and the odd tree trunk. A man, a woman and a girl are working in the well-tended patches of cultivated land." ( )