Rebel Heart picks up precisely where Blood Red Road leaves off, with Saba's true love, Jack, on his way to the Lost Cause tavern to tell Molly of Ike's death. Meanwhile, Saba, her twin, Lugh, and their younger sister, Emmi, are on their way to the Big Water in the West.
Saba may have killed Vicar Pinch (the self-appointed monarch, à la Louis XIV), but "you can't kill all the badness in the world," Jack thinks to himself, as he observes what seems to be a new strain of Tontons at the Lost Cause. These black-robed men are clean-shaven with short-cropped hair, gleaming boots and groomed horses. Only one man could be behind this: DeMalo. Saba sees the dead following her, and hears stories about Jack joining the Tontons, and once again finds herself torn between DeMalo and Jack in surprising ways. Lugh told Saba she couldn't trust Jack. Is he right?
Young introduces new landscapes as breathtaking as the heroine's environments in the first book. Saba starts out in the aptly named seemingly endless Waste and travels through a lush land called Weeping Water. She meets memorable characters such as the lithe Sky Speaker, Auriel Tai and old man Slim, who wears a pink dress and drives a dilapidated contraption called the Cosmic, pulled by a camel named Moses. Saba continues to struggle to determine which rules her fate--her heart or the stars. Readers will be champing at the bit to get to the conclusion of this poetic, action-packed trilogy. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness