Saba and Jack are connected so deeply that when she hears he is in danger, she puts her beloved twin brother, younger sister, and friends old and new at risk to rescue him in a postapocalyptic world being ruthlessly rebuilt by a fanatic known as The Pathfinder. This sequel to Blood Red Road (2011) continues Saba and Jack's love story and explores a complicated sibling relationship while also advancing the story line related to the visionary Pathfinder and his Tonton henchmen. Character voices are as spare as the pockmarked, wreck-littered landscape, and they come with a distinct western twang as Young masterfully moves through the seamless fantasy world she has created. Less secure readers may have trouble following the prose because the spelling supports the dialect, and the lack of quotation marks can make it difficult to track conversations. The older age designation has nothing to do with sex or violence, but reflects the mature decisions and complex relationships present in this romantic quest.

Following Blood Red Road, Saba, having rescued her twin brother Lugh from the thuggish Tonton, is set to depart across the Big Water to a better life when she's sidetracked by the apparent betrayal of Jack, her capricious ally and romantic foil. The characters are deliciously complex, the perilous landscape fully realized, and Saba is the perfect mix of toughness and compassion.

Good post-apocalyptic fiction raises questions about humankind's capacity to learn from its mistakes, but this thinly-plotted second installment of the Dustlands trilogy is not up to the task. Here, the common folk, with all the trappings of peasantry from centuries past, are lifted from their mean lives by shamans, sweat lodges and vision quests. Heroes and heroines rise from the ranks to battle the evil Tonton and their new leader, the Pathfinder, who's set upon slaughtering the old and weak and creating a race of settlers for New Eden. Wrecker civilization has left car-strewn hillsides, imposing concrete buildings and wastelands for Saba and her motley crew to traverse. But Saba, with a price on her head, mostly wants to be left alone to ride west to reunite with her one true love, Jack--although she's tempted by others along the way. Derivative plot elements, from the nine black-robed men on horseback to the Wraithway, are not helped by the progressively garbled syntax that connotes not so much a dialect as the well-worn trope of the noble savage. Saba finds the Wraithway filled with evidence of Wreckers' "earth hate.…The skellentons of their buildins. The toppled chimleys," a place haunted by "the spirits of earth an water." Where Blood Red Road (2011) was fast-paced and chaotic, this meandering book just bogs down. (Post-apocalyptic adventure. 12 & up)

Gr 7 Up- Rebel Heart starts where Blood Red Road (S &; S, 2011) left off. While Saba, her siblings, and friends travel west to start a new life, they learn that there's a new man looking for her, known as the Pathfinder. He has offered a bounty for Saba because she rescued her brother, Lugh, and killed the Vicar. The vicious Tonton soldiers have regrouped and are grabbing land from Waste settlers to create New Eden-a thriving world the way it was before Wreckers destroyed it. Resistance groups have formed to fight back. Saba's life has become more complicated: there is tension between her and Lugh, she is haunted by strange dreams, and it appears that her love, Jack, has betrayed her. She is further confused because she is also drawn to DeMalo (the Pathfinder). Some readers might find Saba's narrative challenging because of the phonetic spelling, poor grammar, and lack of quotation marks to distinguish who is speaking. Teens will also have to get past the numerous coincidences-which Saba attributes to "Destiny"-such as how the characters manage to find one another so easily without any means of communication. Despite these shortcomings, the book will appeal to fans of the first novel, who will want to learn more about survival in this futuristic wasteland and Saba's bonds with others-particularly the romantic ones. Sherry J. Mills, Hazelwood East High School, St. Louis, MO