Review: Katja from the Punk Band

Katja from the Punk Band by Simon Logan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Disclosure: I received a free eBook ARC galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Synopsis from NetGalley: Katja, like everyone else stuck on the work island they call home, wants to get to the mainland by any means necessary.

Shooting her boyfriend and stealing a chemical vial is one way to ensure her safe passage: the only problem is, she's not the only one who wants it, and the freedom it will bring: There's Nikolai the joystick junkie; Aleksakhina, Katja's parole officer; Vladimir Kohl, the small-time chemical dealer, and his boss Szerynski; the rival chemical lord Dracyev, and his lover, Ylena.

And there's the Man In Red, ready and waiting for whoever is (un)lucky enough to end up with the vial.

Jackie Brown meets the Sex Pistols in this fast-paced industrial crime-thriller that weaves multiple storylines and time frames.

My Thoughts: It is sometimes a bit difficult, on an e-reader, to tell when the scene is changing. In a p-book, there will often be a space or some other form of “tell” to let you know, while on an e-reader, often the sections run together. That said, once I’ve figured out we’ve changed to a different point-of-view, it is then a bit difficult to tell when this is taking place. So you have to really be paying attention while you’re reading this book, because the scene will change to a new point-of-view at a different time and you need to be aware all the time of these sorts of things, in order to keep the overall plot in your brain. However, as long as you are paying attention, things work out and you can quickly follow the trail of the story.

One thing that really bothers me – the main character, Katja, has a tracheostomy tube, yet can speak, sing, yell – the whole works. This, while not impossible, is very unlikely. In most cases, after a tracheostomy, unless you have allowed the hole to heal closed, you cannot speak in a normal fashion because the air is coming out of the hole and not going past the vocal cords in order to vibrate them and allow you to make sounds. I suppose if the hole were above the vocal cords, one could make sounds, but since the air comes out through the tube, and not your mouth (therefore you cannot shape certain sounds), again it is very unlikely that you would be able to speak, let alone sing or yell; not only that, but since the vocal cords are, technically, above the trachea, this placement itself is very unlikely. It seems that the author decided it would be cool to have a punk singer have a tracheostomy tube, but didn’t bother to do any research on the situation.

However, I did really enjoy the story. It really is like a Tarantino flick – fast-paced, quick scene changes, quirky characters, ultra-violence, sudden and unexpected twists – it’s all there. If you can move past the problem with the tracheostomy tube, and enjoy this sort of story, you should enjoy Katja From the Punk Band.



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