 So Blood Red Road, which is just the first book in a series called The Dustlands, but I think The Dustlands isn't a very good title, so I'm just going with Blood Red Road. I actually first tried to read this series a couple years ago, two, maybe three years ago now, and I gave up after like two chapters because it's just written in this really obnoxious way where the main character, the main POV character is just going like, oh mom, Pa said we're almost out of chicklets, shucks. It's just over-the-top country uneducated accent, which is just it's too much. I didn't care for it. But I did finally go through and power through and I did get used to the narration after a while and I've read all three books in the series now. And after finishing, I'm going to say it's straight up not a series. It is one standalone book, which is pretty good, followed by two other books that, despite taking place in the same world and following all the same characters, are really unrelated to the first book. Like I mean that. It has nothing to do with the first book story-wise. They are almost completely separated. And quite frankly, the character's personalities shift so completely that they don't even seem like the same people. This is the introduction song. It's not very good but it's not too long. I'll reiterate the first book is pretty good. It's not perfect but I did enjoy it overall. The others are just boring. And that is my one word review of the second and third books in this series. Boring. It's a very sad attempt to both set up a new story and then execute that same story. But it doesn't work because number one, it's just too simplistic and I didn't care about anything that was going on. And number two, the characters don't care about anything that's going on. We'll get into more detail about that later but basically, like I said, they have a complete shift in personality and so I just had no connection to anything that was happening and the actual events don't manage to pick up the slack. And to make things even worse, we go from a villain in the first book who was annoying but he worked well enough for what the story was. You know, he wasn't complex or interesting in any way and I hated him every time he was on screen as it were. But he worked well enough and then the second villain that they fight against the rest of the series just actively sabotages his own plan. Like without going into spoilers here, I'm just going to say that the main heroes could have done literally nothing different and or excuse me, they could have done literally nothing to fight against him and the day still would have been saved. Like he was so self-defeating that they didn't have to do anything. So I haven't actually said what this story is about. It is about a teenage girl named Sabah who is 18 years old in this which makes her practically ancient compared to a lot of protagonists in the young adult sphere for whatever reason. And she lives in this post apocalyptic wasteland. I don't believe they ever give a specific location for where it is or a time frame. It's just a long time after some sort of apocalypse. And she lives in this place called Silver Lake with her brother Lou, her younger sister Emmy, and her dad. Her mom died several years before the story began. And Silver Lake is a decent place to live. There are fish in the lake, there's animals to hunt, they have water, they can grow food there. It's an alright place, all things considered and they are very far out of the way. Very few people live nearby and very few people, really? Like I put my phone on vibrate, it still goes off all the time, I swear it's really annoying. And very few people pass through there. And then one day the soldiers come up and they kill Sabah's dad and they kidnap her brother Lou and take him off somewhere for some sort of nefarious purpose and she decides okay I'm going to go rescue him. Now I'll say right now that's a great setup for a story. You know we're immediately invested and there's a big mystery about like okay who are these people, why did they take her brother, what do they want with him. And we're also invested in the main character going off on this journey because there's a very personal reason for them to go off and save this person. They're sibling obviously. And it's just easy to get very attached to that right away. And from there the story is pretty good. You know it has a fast pace, like things are almost always moving at a good clip, there's things happening all the time. I don't think I was ever super bored throughout the whole first book. Like there are parts I didn't like in the first book but I was never bored. I was always had my eye on the prize of okay Sabah's gonna go rescue Lou. She has to go get her brother and everything else is just a distraction but she still has to go through it in order to get to that point. So it worked really well. I did like exploring this world as well. You know it is post-apocalyptic wasteland sure but and they don't do anything crazy unique with it but they try a little bit to do something. You know like there is some semblance of law and order in this wasteland. It's mostly a very draconian law and order and it's not good by any means but it is at least a little different than what I was expecting. And one thing I liked is that the villain here they mentioned he only has power because there's this drug that is all over the place in this world called Chol. And it is basically the bedrock for their economy as it were. They don't have much of an economy but what they do have is all based around Chol and trading it and the villain controls like the one area where Chol can actually be grown so it makes sense that he would have this immense wealth and power just based on that. And there's a few other details about the setting outside of that that just they worked in the first book at least. And then the obligatory romance because obviously it's an adventure story there has to be an obligatory romance for the protagonist is not bad. You know it's not amazing but I see how Saba and Jack the guy she meets and forms a relationship with I see how they would be attracted to one another. We do see them grow closer over the course of the story and it's just you know it's just nice to witness. You know it's nothing crazy good about it. Like it does that thing that a lot of stories do where the leads are already in love by the end of the first book so the rest of the series they just separate them and they're not allowed to do anything or be together in any way until the very end. It's it's really obnoxious and stupid I don't like that but you know and the end of the first book Blood Red Road actually finishes the story. You know like the first book is a standalone there it finishes things off like the characters all finish what they need to do and then they ride off into the sunset to start a new life so you think yeah there's there's no need to go past this and there really wasn't but you know that's that's a problem for books two and three. Where the first book goes wrong really and this continues throughout through the rest of the series is with the characters. Now Saba is good at first because she really is just a regular girl who has never gone very far from the spot she was born who is swept up in these crazy events and even though it there's horrible danger she is willing to go through hell to rescue her brother and that's great I loved her at first but by the two-thirds mark of the first book and throughout the rest of the series I started to realize that this girl is just too good at things that she has no justification being good at. Without going into too much detail she winds up in some fighting pits like a fighting arena at one point and the story doesn't describe it in a lot of detail but it basically just goes yeah I won every fight I was in for a month like they kept pulling me out and putting me up against other people and I beat them without any trouble and then I was done and like she's apparently so good at fighting that not only does she never lose but the spectators start calling her the angel of death and that's a nickname that sticks with her the rest of the series and I don't see where she would learn to fight like this or how she'd be that good at it like at the beginning of the book it seems like she's someone who has experience hunting and tracking but she does not have any real combat experience you know and obviously some of those skills do translate and I would find it believable that her dad would show her how to fight a little bit because it's a dangerous world they live in so I'd be willing to roll with it if Saba was just like an above average fighter but she's not above average she's like mind-blowingly amazing and everyone's impressed by her it's it's just odd and then later we have that same problem with her being a leader like she she just straight up leads a guerrilla war through the last part of the series and I'm just left wondering well how did she learn any of this how does she know how to do this how does she know how to lead people like this none of it makes sense it's just because she's the main character therefore she has to be good at these things then we have her younger sister Emmy who is fucking annoying oh my god I hated Emmy so much and she contributes nothing at all to the story other than being an obstacle for other characters who are even if they're not great they're more likable than she is like at first after the soldiers come kill her dad and her brother Saba's like okay Emmy's all right but I need to go after Lou so she just takes her over to one of their neighbors who still lives very far away and has to go like a day out of her way like a day where the soldiers are taken her brother further and further away because she needs to leave Emmy off with someone else she she's only nine years old she can't take her with her and she just tells her hey um if I come back then great but if not please just take care of my sister for me uh and it's actually kind of an emotional moment so then Saba leaves on her own and it's a couple days in their time but in the book it's almost immediately Emmy comes back and follows her like Emmy just stole their neighbor's horse and followed her and then they're just together the rest of the journey and I want to take a moment to point out and the book point this points this out too this isn't me just noticing something that the author didn't but I want to point out that their neighbor who Emmy stole the horse from is crippled like she has a bad ankle she can't get around very well and she needs that horse to move around and Emmy just stole it and they never give it back and Emmy just stole the horse because I want to come with you it I god I'm sorry like anyone who has younger siblings knows that feeling and it it just fills you with such primal rage such primal savage rage like you cannot come go the fuck away except in this case it's a literal matter of life and death so it's even worse and you might be thinking okay okay James you're being a big meanie number one Emmy's a little kid which does explain her actions that doesn't mean I want to fucking read about them but on top of her being a little kid surely the author wouldn't just throw that in there and then have Emmy do nothing throughout the rest of the series like surely there will be a point where she comes along and manages to save her sister and it turns out it was a good thing to bring her along and you would be wrong about that because Emmy immediately gets herself captured and she also gets Saba captured and Saba would try and escape on her own but she can't because the people who have them will hurt her sister if she tries so she's just stuck there for a while and then later she gets captured some more and then later she just drags everyone else down repeatedly and it doesn't matter how many times people call her out on this no one ever really punishes her for it or anything and she keeps doing it until the end of book three and I hated it it was so obnoxious she is a fucking anchor dragging every scene down I have problems with Lou as well but I can't really talk about them without spoilers so that'll be spoiler section and then there's the villain of the first book who is a guy named vicar pinch which is a strange name he calls himself the king of this land like this area you know he controls the chal production so he has all this power he has his own private army it's not the craziest thing for him to call himself the king but he's also just crazy like that that's it he's annoying while being crazy but he's he's just crazy he's detached from reality and he has a bunch of people who follow him for whatever reason I'm not sure why he hasn't just been overthrown in a coup at this stage but he has a bunch of people that follow him and that that's it he's just crazy there's nothing else to him there's no depth there there's no likeability there's no humor there's no threat coming from him he's just annoying every time he opens his mouth and he's crazy that's it the only character uh who I have left to mention who I think is okay is jack who remember his saba's love interest and he's he's okay you know like like I was saying earlier I get why he and saba would be in love he's a decent enough bloke all things considered uh and one small detail I did like is that the first book is entirely told in saba's first person pov but then the second and third books do add in a couple of sequences that are in third person following other people which I normally hate but in this case it did take advantage of that so we get to see into jack's head a little bit more and we see that even though he seems really confident and in control at all times that is really just something that he tries to project about himself so that people don't take advantage of perceived weakness and really inside he's like much more scared and insecure than he lets on and that's that's a small detail but I liked it having these annoying obnoxious characters is bad enough in the first book but the story is still pretty good and it has a quick enough pace that nothing ever really gets bogged down uh but then in the second and third books when the story gets shittier there's really nothing saving it you know like the story gets shittier and the characters were always bad and they just honestly get worse and we stop really exploring this world and we stop learning more about it so there's just nothing there to save it and the whole thing just sinks it is it's a mess and um that's about all I have to say in the non-spoiler section my final verdict if you want to read this only read the first book because the second third ones are just trash and I really mean it when I say the story is complete by the end of the first book like there's nothing else to do after that stage there's no point in sticking around beyond that anyways spoilers let's go I hope this is a puffed-in version of the song not that sting piece of shit okay so real quick just a couple things about the end of the first book so that we're all in the same page uh so vicar pinch the evil crazy king uh wanted lu for a sacrifice because he believes that lu being a boy who was born on under a full moon on the winter solstice has like a really powerful spirit and so he lets him grow up until the age of 18 and then he's gonna take him and sacrifice him and when he does that the the king will absorb his spirit and he'll get to live for a while longer and I mean sure that that's fine enough and you might hear that and think like okay the people of this world have some weird beliefs around spirituality and like some weird superstitions and some weird religious beliefs and stuff but vicar pinch as far as we can tell was the only person who has beliefs anything like that like his own soldiers and followers don't seem to buy into it that much they're just humoring him for whatever reason and this idea hasn't spread throughout the rest of the wasteland that we see so it's really just this one guy and I also found myself wondering is this true or not and because at first I was thinking okay this is just not true like all this superstitious stuff that people talk about like absorbing people's spirits or reading the future in the stars things like that at first I was thinking okay it's just what these people believe but it's not true but at times it seems almost like it is like at the beginning saba's dad sees the soldiers coming and he says ah the stars told me this would be true and that just never comes back up like no one else ever predicts the future after that so it seems like the author wasn't sure if she wanted supernatural stuff to be here or not which is annoying but anyways saba goes through this whole long song and dance gathers up some allies including jack and they finally make it to vicar pinch's palace uh and it's like the night of the sacrifice and she leaves emmy with one of the other people and just says hey if we're not back in like a day we're probably all dead so just run off and if we do come back then we'll have lu with us and it'll all be good and so they run off they rescue lu and they escape and it's actually a pretty thrilling sequence i did enjoy it and then when they get back oh shit emmy's gone yeah she followed after them because i want to go with you and god i i think half the reason i hate her so much is because the narrator in the audiobook did that fucking voice for her and i swear to god i swear to god like emmy just got herself captured again a second time in the same book and once again saba and the others have to go and rescue her and as she's being held hostage by the king uh they all wind up being surrounded by other soldiers and disarmed and they're about to all be executed and the day is only saved because a different group of allies that was never mentioned before this and i don't even think comes back up afterwards just comes out of the blue and attacks the soldiers from behind and then there's a little battle and saba kills vicar pinch and then that's that's it that's the end of the day that they save the day and that's the end of the book and honestly honestly if that if emmy was my sister and i had to save her twice like that the second time i'm just leaving her i'm sorry if that sounds callous but you should have learned your lesson the first time you fucking idiots like i hope you have fun dying because you were weak and you need to be removed from the gene pool and then after saving everybody uh saba and company are like okay let's get out of here and go start a new life somewhere else and jack says yeah that sounds like a good idea go west until you hit the ocean and i'll meet you there but i have to go take care of some other business first and then he rides off into the sunset but it's like hey we'll see each other again soon and then they get to start a new life so like i was saying the story is over here there's no obvious places where it can go the second book is largely them just dicking around and waiting for lu because they again go on the journey to the ocean and they're just waiting for him to show up and there are several points where they could just continue on on their own but saba's like no i need to wait for jack and it's just it's it's really obnoxious and as this is happening vicar's lieutenant whose name is demolo and it's actually implied that he was the one that was really running things while the king was still alive because again the king was crazy uh he is basically starting up a new country like they call it new eden and they're basically just gathering up able-bodied people and trying to get farmland going and they're starting up a civilization with like actual law and order and stuff even though there was already some of that beforehand and he's basically saying hey it's a new beginning so we can rebuild after the world was destroyed a long time ago and new eden is largely a paradise like it's great in a lot of ways and i think the author realized that and she's like oh okay the villain isn't really doing anything wrong here so she just went really over the top in making him evil like he's he's creating a new haven for humanity but he's being a dick about it like he's using slavery and uh he's having people you know breed to try and make a new stronger generation and all that uh but then when the babies are born they inspect them and if they're too weak then they just leave them out in the elements to die like that that thing that Spartans allegedly did but is probably Athenian propaganda you know they just they just do that and he breaks up families and he steals good farmland from the people that were already living there like you know he he's just being a dick for no real reason and the rest of the series is them fighting him but then at at the end like he's just undone by his own actions like just him being a dick is what turns everybody against him and i have to ask why Saba even cares because she has no real personal connection here like she went to go save her brother in the first book because he's her he's her brother and she loves him and the you know larger geopolitical consequences are of no concern to her she's like yeah fuck you people i'm saving my brother and then we're gonna go off somewhere and just start a new life and as she's hearing about all this horrible stuff going on it seems like it would be more in character for her to go wow that really sucks good luck with that and if i meet anyone along the way i'll try and help them maybe but i'm just getting the fuck out of here like that that would be the thing that would make sense but she just decides because that we wouldn't really have a story for the second and third books if she didn't she decides we have to stop demolo and then she just leads a guerrilla campaign against him and i mean that could be okay but demolo is like in love with Saba because i don't know she's the main character she just i don't know the villain it has to be obsessed with the main character for some reason uh and so he's not going to kill her in fact he has a lot of opportunities to kill her and he doesn't take them because he's in love with her and he wants to marry her and have children and stuff and just so it sucks a lot of the tension out of the story which could have been there you know because her loved ones can still be killed sure she can still fail in her goal to stop demolo from creating a new place which is kind of shitty for some people but also great for others and i mean her only real stated reason for wanting to do this is because like freedom i guess like that that's really it and i mean again i understand why people would hate demolo and want to fight against him it just doesn't really work for Saba so anyways large parts of the second and third books are just them going around performing guerrilla actions attacking checkpoints that sort of thing it gets a little interesting in the third book when rather than outright attacking them they just start trying to undermine the system he's created like they start rescuing babies that were left out in the elements to die and bringing them back to their parents and saying like hey just keep them and hide them for a bit they'll assume like a coyote took him away so they won't go looking for a corpse or anything you know that that's a little different at least so that's kind of interesting and then shit gets real and emmy is killed awesome and then lu is also killed right after that and his death is actually the only emotional scene in the entire third book i'll be honest wait because even though i found him annoying and like i said i'll talk about that in a minute uh Saba's reaction to seeing her brother die after she had gone through all of this to save him is genuinely heartbreaking but you know he dies and then Saba seems to be giving up she's like okay i agree to marry demolo if he gives all my friends and allies safe passage out of here and her friends are like mad at her for doing that not because she surrendered and they wanted to keep fighting but because that waltz mostly jack he's like how dare you marry that guy and not marry me i don't know also at one point in the second book demolo and Saba had sex because just i don't know we needed some way to introduce conflict here so then after Saba agrees to marry demolo she has a miscarriage actually which i don't know why that was there but she had a miscarriage and they they straight up say they weren't sure who the dad would have been if it would have been demolo or jack but like it's it's a moot point now and then they have a whole big wedding ceremony and at the ceremony when everybody's there one of Saba's friends who's been fighting alongside her since book one comes up and his name is tamo and he is deaf but he has mentioned that when he was a little kid his dad disappeared and he assumed that his dad had died because he just wandered off from their camp and never came back but it turns out his dad actually is demolo and he abandoned him because demolo again is like so obsessed with people being strong and pure to create a good new world that he couldn't stand having a disabled son and so he's just like dad why did you leave me and then the crowd realizes wait demolo's son is disabled he has weak sperm he's not one of the strong we shouldn't follow him and then everything just falls apart and like that's it i swear to god i'm not leaving anything out like that just that's the end of of his empire now i get that the author was probably trying to do something a little unique here because we would have expected there to be like a big battle of some sort at the end and the author's like oh okay i will do something different i'll subvert your expectations there and i i'm glad she tried but it just it didn't work it's not good here it's just not at all it's very very unsatisfying because it's just too easy like again they literally could have done that at any point and the whole thing would have fallen apart plus it doesn't make that much sense because followers of authoritarian personalities like that are very very okay with blatant hypocrisy like you you look at the actions of dictators and stuff their fanboys tend to be really okay with them just rubbing the their hypocrisy in everybody's faces like i don't want to go into too much detail with that because that's a long tangent but seriously that's just a very unsatisfying climax however i will say that the ending after the climax is pretty good because saba again has lost her dad in the first book lost her mom before that lost her brother and sister by the end of this she wants nothing more to do with this area there's nothing more for her here and so she wanders off and jack wanders off with her and they just go to start a new life together and that that's actually an okay ending i liked that but everything leading up to that was terrible okay so i'll end this bit off by talking about lose some more so the setup for this first book blood red road is actually very similar to the setup for a television show called revolution which was a good show it unfortunately got canceled early but i mean they did finish the story off with a comic at least so that's nice um and in that one it's also a post apocalyptic world and the main character is also a teenage girl in her late teens i don't think they specify with charlie from revolution but she's like 18 or 19 and saba is 18 and in both cases their mother died several years before the story began and so they were living with their dad and their brother and in both cases some soldiers come along and kidnap their brother and kill their dad so the main character girl goes off on a journey to rescue their brother it's actually kind of strange how similar these setups are like i'm not saying it's bad in both cases it works really well but it is strange to think about yeah this is just the exact same setup the difference is though in revolution when they rescued charlie's brother he almost immediately gets killed right after that and the reason for that i think is that they realized okay charlie's not gonna go up fighting against dictators and people like that uh with just with no reason to you know like she has saved her brother she just is gonna fuck off into the wilderness never to be seen from again never to be heard from again and just that that's it so they don't really have a place to put a story so they kill off her brother so that she just wants revenge now and that's really her uh goal throughout that the not the rest of the show but the rest of that portion of the show at least and i bring that up here because in blood red road after lu is rescued i don't think the author really knew what to do with him like he doesn't have any personality in the first book he is barely in the first book he's just the object that people are fighting over and that the plot is revolving around and so when in the second book when he becomes an actual character she's like okay we need to put in some sort of conflict around him i guess and it's really forced because and this might sound weird but lu and sabah's relationship is a totally normal sibling relationship like they love each other but it's familial love like neither of them has any romantic or sexual feelings for the other in any way and yet in spite of that the story almost treats lu like he is a love interest like they treat him as if he's the third leg of a love triangle who gets spurned by the main character and is really resentful for it because throughout the entire second book or at least most of the second book he's just talking mad shit about jack and how he's like oh sabah you're so obsessed with jack i can't believe you like jack and like he barely knows this guy all he knows about him is that he was instrumental in saving his life and he helped protect his two sisters while he was being held hostage and don't get me wrong while while lu was being held prisoner about to be sacrificed he went through some unpleasant things so like if he is snapping at people and stuff like i'll i'll give him some slack on that but he just goes on and on for such a long time and it's so annoying and other characters straight up mention that it's he feels as if uh jack stole sabah and emmy from him and i just i i don't get that i really don't like again i feel like if i was kidnapped and almost killed and while i was indisposed somebody protected my sisters and then also helped to save my life i would be okay with that guy you know i i would i would want to be his friend and if he's also starting to date my sister now i'd be like cool bro i'm i'm glad she's with somebody that i know is trustworthy and can keep her safe like i am i alone in that i don't know other people let let me know down below but i just it's such a weird reaction for him to have and again it feels like he is the spurned third leg of a love triangle even though there's no romance there at all i don't know like i said it's just a very forced conflict and i did uh i did not care for it and lu because of that became just really annoying and they didn't have much else to add to his personality after that like they could have done something with him like have him work through the trauma of almost being killed that that would have been cool they could have had him feel inadequate next to jack and feel like okay i need to like train and become a better fighter and stuff so i can help to protect my sisters which could also work but they just i don't know they had nowhere to go so they just came up with this forced conflict and i don't know they i don't have anything else to add other than blood red road is a very good example of why you shouldn't force a story to continue long after its natural conclusion because this one went on three times longer than it should have and uh that's all goodbye huge thanks to everybody who watched this far not totally sure why you would but you know i appreciate it uh if you could rate the video comment and subscribe then that would uh that would be great so that would help boost this you know and if you don't feel like doing that you can always become one of my patrons hey look at all these names on the screen yeah those are my patrons they send me money want some month over on patreon if you want stuff like early access to videos and or just to know you know help me out then go ahead and head over 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