Petra K and the Blackhearts tries a little too hard.

There are the hallmarks for a very interesting world here, but it isn't fleshed out so well. Petra K (and we never learn what the K stands for or if it's part of her last name; even her mother and father are Name K) lives in the ghetto of a town ruled by a child tyrant, in a world where automatons exist, tiny dragons called dragonka are pets/show animals, and ghosts and magic and different races of people are the norm.

That's about where anything interesting ends, unfortunately.

Petra K is ten years old, poor, and she stumbles upon a dragonka of her very own. That's sort of how she goes about her life in this entire novel, as well; Petra K kind of stumbles from scene to scene because the plot dictates it. As a result, the whole novel feels disjointed, as though each section could have been short stories, vignettes in the life of Petra K.

It also reads way above Petra K's age level. Somehow, the kids in this novel (are they also ten years old? Early teens?) are gang members, start a revolution, and even the bad kids, the eeeevil school girls who tease Petra (and MUST be ten years old as well, if they're in the same school year) act like they're adults. Or play at being adults.

It's all so weird. There are underground dragonka races/fighting, allusions to communism, kids starting a revolution, brainwashing, ghosts haunting the tyrant prince, mechanical hearts, horrible scientific experiments -- and Petra happens to not only stumble on to each of these things, but eventually plays a significant role in each part. I'm not buying it. There was only so much belief I could suspend after the first 50 pages, and it didn't get much better from there.

I think with some good editing (I kept catching grammatical mistakes) the story could be tightened and flow much better, but unfortunately this didn't do much for me.

(A copy was provided for review from Edelweiss; this had no outcome on the review.)