Book Review: Blood Red Road

TITLE: Blood Red Road
Book 1 in the new Dustlands series
AUTHOR: Moira Young
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: dystopian, adventure
PREMISE: When Saba's brother is taken by strangers, she goes on a tough journey to bring him back.
MY REVIEW: First I'm going to get off my chest the one huge thing about this book that bugged the hell out of me. Please note, this is mostly a personal preference and therefore doesn't have much to do with the quality of the book. My issue is the no quotation marks thing. Young is not the first to use this style but god do I hate it with a passion. Look, I have no problem with the different way of talking, or no commas or little things like that. But quotation marks help readers know when stuff is dialogue and when it's thoughts. I had to go back and reread several passages of stuff just to be able to tell if it was dialogue or Saba's inner monologue (it didn't help that this was in first person present tense). This does NOT help your book authors. It only serves to irritate readers. So why one earth do you use it? If someone could please explain the reasoning behind this irritating style of writing, please do so because I am at a loss about it. I hope to god it does not catch on like present tense has (I find that irritating enough).
Other then that major irritation, this book was great. Young has a interesting dense world here, the book is a edge-of-your seat page turner along the lines of Hunger Games (though not as good as HG, sorry to say), and while Saba is probably a bit hard to relate too I enjoyed her after awhile. I didn't even mind the rather obvious love interest because the relationship was rather sweet if predictable (plus, Jack was rather hilarious).
I will say I sort of wish this wasn't a trilogy because for me it ended in the perfect place with stuff all tied up so I don't really see the need for sequels. But this is the way of the publishing industry nowadays and at least this world is interesting enough that I don't mind the idea of a trilogy. I do hope in the future books we find out more about the freedom fighter girls because they were seriously interesting to me.
WHO SHOULD READ: Hunger Games fans, dystopian fans
MY RATING: Four and a half out of Five crows