The Blair Book Project

WARNING: Review contains spoilers regarding Blood Red Road.In Blood Red Road, the first book of the Dust Lands series, we were introduced to our heroine named Saba. A tough girl determined to find her twin brother, Lugh, after being kidnapped by the Tonton, a group of ruthless thugs whose job is to either seize or kill. In the middle of her journey to rescue her brother, Saba finds herself captured and sold to fight off in cage matches. Saba, dubbed as the Angel of Death, has never been beaten – not even once. In the midst of all the fighting, she meets and develops feelings for Jack, a co-fighter amongst the men’s category. Not forgetting her promise to find Lugh, Saba teams up with Jack and a group of revolutionaries to overthrow a vicious leader who calls himself THE KING. Ugh! Self-absorbed, much?Anyway, the adventure continues on to Rebel Heart. After a brutal yet victorious battle against the King, Saba (along with Emmi and Lugh), and Jack go separate ways, but they promised to meet each other at a certain point in their journey. But traveling to greener pastures isn’t as easy as they hoped it would be. Jack goes off to deliver news to Ike’s girl, but something terrible happens and Jack ends up in deeper trouble. What’s worse is Saba has a price over her head. Even worse is that the Tonton, which they’ve hoped to have put an end to, has come back stronger and more organized. Although their former leader is dead, it looks like someone else was eager to step in to lead...I honestly had high expectations about this book. Being left with an amazing story from Blood Red Road, I was really excited to see what’s next to come so I immediately grabbed a copy of Rebel Heart. Lo and behold, the Prologue was focused on Jack! And the way he felt for Saba was beyond doubt true and sweet *giggle*. After that though, things got crazy. Crazy bad that is – it was back to Saba’s POV.I wouldn’t have minded that it was Saba talking throughout the book, it’s just that Saba came out annoying. Incredibly!!! I’ve grown to like her somehow in Blood Red Road but with Rebel Heart, I’d say Maev and Emmi were more of interesting people than Saba. In fact, I saw Maev as more of the heroine here than Saba. Yup… she’s that useless. Not to mention that she made the most incredibly idiotic mistake she could ever make in her life! Now if you’d ask me what I think of Lugh, you might as well forget it because I have nothing good to say about him. He was a douchebag!!! I swear he’s the most irritating person ever! I wish Saba never even bothered to rescue him in the first place for how much of an ass he came out to be.So obviously I’m not in favor of the protags of this book, is it a surprise that I find myself liking the antagonist instead? Oh yeah! DeMalo! *snicker* I don’t even know why I like this guy. It seems there’s more to him than what has been shown. I’m eager to know more of him. But what about Jack you might ask? I think it was pretty clear that I loved him in the first book, and I still do with Rebel Heart (maybe a little less after a certain event, but just a smidge lesser. *laughs*). Sadly I didn’t get to see much of him not until I was about to finish the book. I’m glad he’s all devoted to Saba, but I’m intrigued if he’d still feel the same way once Saba’s secret is out. [Saba] girl, you are in for a lot of trouble! Overall this book was respectable, although I’d still favor the first one. This story has taken a different turn than I’d have expected. It would have been interesting and worth reading every page of it hadn’t been for Saba’s annoying attitude and stupid decisions. For more of my reviews, please visit my blog: The Blair Book Project @ www.theblairbookproject.blogspot.com