Scan barcode
A review by activehearts
Katya's World by Jonathan L. Howard
3.0
More like 3.5 because of the ending, but I've got mixed feelings about this book. Um, okay, for one thing... whoa it was like watching an action film, characters going from the frying pan and into the fire time after time, without many pauses for recollection or more introspection from the characters. So it was a fast read that didn't completely satisfy me.
Definitely my favorite thing about this book were the main female characters (only two), I mean, uncle Lukyan was nice and all, but I wasn't really invested in any of the male characters. Katya, the MC, was great. Tasya, her antagonist?, was awesome too and I was glad to find no internalized misogyny even if they were on opposite sides. It's always disheartening how much sexism there is in YA literature, especially when relationships between female characters are scarce. Which leads me to exactly that. Even if I loved the fact that Katya and Tasya ended up having respect and admiration for each other, wow, I'd have loved a story about Tasya mentoring Katya a lot more.
Havilland Kane, the other main character, was the prototypical male character with a lot of manpain stored, that guy who's seen suffering and made a sacrifice, etc., etc., which apparently gives him carte blanche to be condescending and paternalistic, and there were one too many scenes of him treating Katya like a silly kid and adopting a patronizing tone to teach her stuff she's perfectly capable of figuring out by herself. Thankfully, there was no romantic plot between him and Katya, and eventually she gives him a well-deserved verbal smack down.
I'll keep reading this series, but entirely out of love for Katya and Tasya.
Definitely my favorite thing about this book were the main female characters (only two), I mean, uncle Lukyan was nice and all, but I wasn't really invested in any of the male characters. Katya, the MC, was great. Tasya, her antagonist?, was awesome too and I was glad to find no internalized misogyny even if they were on opposite sides. It's always disheartening how much sexism there is in YA literature, especially when relationships between female characters are scarce. Which leads me to exactly that. Even if I loved the fact that Katya and Tasya ended up having respect and admiration for each other, wow, I'd have loved a story about Tasya mentoring Katya a lot more.
Havilland Kane, the other main character, was the prototypical male character with a lot of manpain stored, that guy who's seen suffering and made a sacrifice, etc., etc., which apparently gives him carte blanche to be condescending and paternalistic, and there were one too many scenes of him treating Katya like a silly kid and adopting a patronizing tone to teach her stuff she's perfectly capable of figuring out by herself. Thankfully, there was no romantic plot between him and Katya, and eventually she gives him a well-deserved verbal smack down.
I'll keep reading this series, but entirely out of love for Katya and Tasya.