Tasha Review: Katya's World

Katya's World (Russalka Chronicles #1) by Jonathan L. Howard
Publication Date: November 6, 2012
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Pages: 327

Summary

The distant and unloved colony world of Russalka has no land, only the raging sea. No clear skies, only the endless storm clouds. Beneath the waves, the people live in pressurised environments and take what they need from the boundless ocean. It is a hard life, but it is theirs and they fought a war against Earth to protect it. But wars leave wounds that never quite heal, and secrets that never quite lie silent.

Katya Kuriakova doesn’t care much about ancient history like that, though. She is making her first submarine voyage as crew; the first nice, simple journey of what she expects to be a nice, simple career.

There is nothing nice and simple about the deep black waters of Russalka, however; soon she will encounter pirates and war criminals, see death and tragedy at first hand, and realise that her world’s future lies on the narrowest of knife edges. For in the crushing depths lies a sleeping monster, an abomination of unknown origin, and when it wakes, it will seek out and kill every single person on the planet. 

This is a book that I loved the first two hundred pages or so and disliked the last hundred. The book dragged those last hundred pages. I know this is a weird way to start off a review but that was the biggest thing I took away from this book. Not the plot or it's characters, but  that it was a hundred pages too long.

Let's back up a bit. The plot is good. It revolves around Katya trying to survive an attack by an unknown enemy while trying to figure out if Havilland Kane, a deadly pirate, could be trusted or not. And in the wonderful world building and side plots it worked pretty good. But once again it was too long. It just felt like it was just going and going with no end in sight. Maybe if a few of the side plots, as much as I liked them, it would've been a better book with a better flow.

I wasn't much of a fan of Katya. She was just kind of there. I was a bigger fan of Kane. I was just something about not knowing which side he was on. I thought I knew like three times before the end of the book.  He was really well written. Petrov and Tasya were also entertaining. They helped make the two leads more three dimensional. 

This is the first book of a series. You can clearly tell. I kind of wish it wasn't. I think this story would've been better suited if this was a one off. It would've allowed it to tight up it's storytelling. And though I enjoyed the book, I don't know it I enjoyed it enough to pick up the next book.

3/5