Book Review - Ka Kite Bro - Negative

Author: Willie Davis

Ka kite bro is a story sure to make you fall asleep. Tama, the main character and protagonist, could be seen as strong, resilient or compassionate, but I just saw him as whiny, annoying and weak. The teachers weren’t even remotely realistic, with their insulting, childish ways. If a child's best friends just died would any decent adult say something like, ‘You’re not going to use your friend’s death as an excuse to skip class now, are you?’ which is exactly what Mr Watson said to Tama after Tama found out about his best friend’s death.

This story nearly made me stop reading and it’s only four pages long, what does that tell you? It was honestly the worst story I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading.

The dialogue was stale, and about eighty percent of this story was dialogue. The author seemed to have tried to pack as much “emotion” and action into the story as he could, but he miserably failed. Where he tried to make me feel sad about the situation, I nearly laughed because of some of the descriptions of emotions and insults, for example, ‘anger and hurt added to more anger and hurt,’ and ‘my pain and tears want to sing.’ Really who wrote this?

I was unable to succumb up even a small amount of sympathy for Tama and the racism in this story because it’s all just so ludicrous. It made me ashamed to be from New Zealand if this is the type of story written about our country, and if our writers are sending this drivel idiocy out for the world to see and read.

If this is how Willie Davis writes I don’t want to read anything else by him. This is supposed to make you feel melancholy and disappointed in the blatant racism flaunted throughout this story, but it’s more likely to make you feel like racism isn’t big of an issue if it sound like this,  ‘You know, like what you Maoris say … how does it go … keey … yaar…kaar…haar,’ this said by a teacher, queue eyeroll.

In conclusion, the plot was flat, the dialogue trite, the emotions I felt, were not that of sorrow, instead of amusement. If you want to read this short story, don’t. You’ll just regret it later and would have wasted fifteen minutes on a pile of crap rather than a story that’s actually worth your time to read. But if you feel like dumbing yourself down there are copies of this trash online for your reading displeasure.