Kitty Hawk

Kitty Hawk and The Curse of Yukon Gold

by Iain Reading

Summary

After leaving her home in the western Canadian fishing village of Tofino to spend the summer in Alaska studying humpback whales Kitty finds herself caught up in an unforgettable adventure involving stolen gold, devious criminals, ghostly shipwrecks, and bone-chilling curses. Kitty's adventure begins with the lingering mystery of a sunken ship called the Clara Nevada and as the plot continues to unfold this spirited story will have armchair explorers and amateur detectives alike anxiously following every twist and turn as they are swept along through the history of the Klondike Gold Rush to a suspenseful final climatic chase across the rugged terrain of Canada's Yukon, the harsh land made famous in the stories and poems of such writers as Jack London, Robert Service and Pierre Berton. It is a riveting tale that brings to glorious life the landscape and history of Alaska's inside passage and Canada's Yukon, as Kitty is caught up in an epic mystery set against the backdrop of the scenery of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is a perfect book to fire the imagination of readers of all ages. Filled with fascinating and highly Google-able locations and history this book will inspire anyone to learn and experience more for themselves as Kitty prepares for her next adventure - flying around the world!

Okay so this book is really well written and really well researched. However, it seems to be having a little bit of an identity crisis! It can’t seem to decide whether it’s a textbook or a novel – which is kind of important don’t you think? The author probably intended to try and educate through the use of fiction but it really didn’t work. I like a good documentary. I also like an adventure. But what I don’t like is having them both mixed up together. If the tactic was to merge fact with fiction it needed to be seamless but in this book the jumps between the two genres is stilted and forced. I therefore found myself skim reading the factual stuff to get back to the story which to be honest, wasn’t that compelling and the characters weak. I especially found the conversations between Kitty ‘and the little voice in her head’ really annoying.

There was also the issue that I can’t quite decide would its audience was. The cover suggests ages 10-14 but the content – especially the factual stuff – is much higher. Then there were the maps and the pictures, which in all honesty were totally unnecessary.

I didn’t find the characters believable – even the baddies were goodies – and Kitty seems to be a bit too perfect. She was a strong female lead promised so much but gave so little. Which lead to yet another disappointing aspect of this book.

Also where was the romance? I thought it was going to happen around p52 but it just fizzled out into nothing.

This book should have been really good but it fell short.

Would I read another Kitty Hawk book? Simple answer, no. It was really hard work!