Kitty Saves the World by Carrie Vaughn

So, Kitty and her eclectic packmates become convinced that Dux Belloram,or Roman, has acquired a magical artifact which will empower him to cause a volcano to erupt - he seems to have done it with Vesuvius centuries ago. So the hunt begins. They lure him to New Mexico with the promise of a new ally - Cormac in drag, so to speak - and try to trap and kill him, but things go badly, and they are attacked by the usual demon and both they and Roman flee the scene.

When they return, Kitty's wolves have all gone missing, and she spends some time running around Denver trying to locate them. The new master of the local seethe of vampires is a weak-willed fellow, who falls under Roman's spell, and eventually forces a confrontation with Kitty.

At long last they discover that Roman is going to work his disastrous spell in Yellowstone, a cauldron of volcanic instability which is long overdue for an eruption. Kitty and all her allies pack up and road trip to the park, where they are able to divine Roman's location and face him down once and for all.

Vaughn claims this is intended to be the last of this series, and it's been a pretty good run, but once you've killed one arch villain, it's tough to top cataclysms and world domination, so she may actually be telling the truth.

Low Midnight by Carrie Vaughn

I just got the joke in the title of this book - the showdown doesn't happen at High Noon, but...Low Midnight. A little slow.

Cormac Bennet is finally off parole, and this story switches to his narrative, instead of Kitty's. A nice change, one would think.

Cormac and his resident ghost travel to the hinterlands of Colorado to speak with the aunt of the witch who gave Kitty her books of spells, hoping that she can help translate the code in which it is written. The aunt decides to test Cormac by setting him a hundred year old mystery to solve regarding a pair of dueling sorcerers in the Wild West. Along the way, Cormac encounters some low lifes from his past, and that of his bounty hunting father's.

A somewhat anticlimactic battle eventually occurs when the thugs get in Cormac's way, and the overall plot arc of this series moves minutely forward. The underlying theme still remains, as it does in most female written urban fantasy these days, about the importance of relying on your friends, and slowly realizing how important they are to you.

Meh.

Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn

I'm not sure what Vaughn was going for here, aside from a touch of Stockholm Syndrome. It seemed like a placemarker novel while she figures out where the story line is going and how the Long Game is going to be resolved.

Kitty's friends find out that Roman aka Dux Bellorum has lured one of the old European vampires into a trap and killed him, while hunting for a magical artifact called The Hand of Hercules. The supernatural community in Colorado decides to take a wait and see attitude, and so do we, if we read this story.

Ben has to travel to the hinterlands on business for a few nights, and while he is away, Kitty goes out to investigate a pair of weres who have invaded her pack's territory. It turns out to be a trap, as well, and she ends up captive to a group consisting of a very old vampire, Kumarbis, a were-lion, Sakhmet, a werewolf, Enkidu, and a sorceress, Zora. Kumarbis turns out to be the vampire who "turned" Roman two millennia ago, and he believes he is the only being who can stop Dux Bellorum. They believe that Kitty is the incarnation of the Regina Luporum, and coerce her into participating in a ritual designed to open a way to Roman's hiding place and to kill him.

The book is basically a couple hundred pages of Kitty captive in an old silver mine, cold, hungry, lonely, and sometimes angry. Plentiful pity party time. Though at one point she has a chance to escape, she decides she must give the conspirators a chance to succeed, or forever wonder what might have been, and if Dux Bellorum could have been stopped "if only".

The only thing Kitty and company seem to gain at the end of this fiasco is a book of spells that Zora places in Kitty's care when the battle with Roman goes TU. Probably needs to be read for completeness, but proceed at your own risk with low expectations.

Kitty Rocks the House by Carrie Vaughn

 Dear Lord, is is just that I've read far too much of this stuff, are are there only a limited number of writer's methods to set up certain situations. This installment of Kitty's adventures just seemed really predictable to me, for some reason.

After a meeting with a powerful vampire who is considering an alliance with Rick (the Master of Denver) and Kitty (who may possibly be the Regina Luparum), a lone werewolf, Darren (Any relation to Samantha's husband from Bewitched?...sorry, my brain goes off on odd tangents once in a while) shows up in Denver and tells Kitty he's tired of being lonely and wants to join her pack, though he's not very submissive about it. Anyone with half a brain can tell this is just going to be trouble, and she should boot him right back out of town, but instead she decides to give him a chance, ignores all the early warning signs, and ends up in a battle for control of the pack, before sending him...ahem...packing.

One of the themes/conflicts in the novel was about how Kitty wasn't spending enough time with the members of her pack, perhaps taking too much of a hands-off approach instead of being involved in their lives, what with her recent history of traveling all over the place either doing publicity for her show, or dealing with supernatural community issues in other cities, plus being involved in the whole Long Game conflict against the followers of Dux Bellorum, or Roman, the millennia-old vampire who wants to rule the world, with humans merely fodder, and werewolves merely servants. Hmm, seems like a recurring theme there with the last novel I reviewed - humans as food. I wonder if the whole scenario wasn't suggested to Vaughn by some feedback from a fan who just wondered what in the world is going on with the pack back home while Kitty is traveling, or how things might begin to fall apart when the alpha is absent.

The other odd thing that happens starts out in a surprising manner (at least I don't recall reading about the idea before), when a powerful yet mild-mannered vampire shows up in Denver, and asks Kitty to be introduced to Rick. Rick's original name was Ricardo, and he was one of the Spanish conquistadors who came to the New World five hundred years ago, a loyal son of the Catholic Church. When it turns out that the vampire, Columban, is actually an undead priest, known to the Vatican, it rocks his world. While he has tried to keep his faith through the centuries, despite the common consensus that vampires and werewolves are spawn of the devil, and damned to Hell for all eternity, it has been very hard for him, trying in an almost Hippocratic sense to "do no harm". Columban wants Rick to join him and his brethren - there are more vampire priests? - which would probably be a bad thing, leaving Kitty without her strongest ally in the city, and the vampires in Denver master-less.

The oddly obvious thing to me in this plotline is that while Columban is holed up in a deconsecrated (though why it had to be deconsecrated, given that the Vatican sanctions his existence, I couldn't say) cathedral, he has written symbols and runes on the outside of the church, and cast a circle of protection (my M:TG history comes through) around the building. Kitty and Ben's friend, the ex-bounty hunter possessed by the spirit of a witch, Cormac, tries to lure the vampire out of hiding by messing around with the wards. They all spend a lot of time wondering what in the world Columban could be afraid of that he would have to ward so powerfully against it. When they finally find out, catastrophically, it's like "well, duh." I'll leave it unstated, no need for true spoilers here.

So, while no real progress is made in the Long Game war, there's a few new alliances made, old alliances perhaps lost, and potential allies still unswayed. Sounds like the next novel will be out fairly soon.

Kitty Steals the Show by Carrie Vaughn

Kitty goes to London! Road trip!

Kitty has been invited to be the keynote speaker at the first international conference on Paranatural Studies, and she's having a very difficult time...writing her speech. She and Ben and Cormac fly first class to London, find lodging with a vampire, Ned, who was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, who is also an ally of the head of the vampire clan in Washington, D.C., Alette.

Kitty just can't help stirring up trouble at the conference, despite the risk of a riot taking place between those who love the paranaturals and those who think they're the devil's spawn - both groups are demonstrating in front of the conference. Dux Bellorum, aka Roman, is also in town, gathering allies in his coming war to dominate the planet. The evil Dr. Fleming will also put in an appearance, as he continues his plotting to experiment on lycanthropes.

Kitty makes the acquaintance and possibly the friendship of the head of all the werewolves in London, Caleb, and seems to earn the title of Queen of the Wolves that the vampires have sarcastically bestowed upon her. The ghost of Amelia, who's still hanging out in Cormac's body (with his consent) takes the group on a trip down memory lane as she introduces them to her old haunts and family ties.

When it's all said and done, nothing earth-shattering happens in this tenth novel in the series, but the scene is nearly set for the final confrontation with Roman and his allies, which I assume will be forthcoming soon.

Kitty's Big Trouble by Carrie Vaughn

Kitty's Big Trouble is the ninth book in this series, and it seems like it's a little lighter fare than some of the previous novels. One of the blogs I read regularly complained about the title of this book, wondering why anyone would sign off on "Big Trouble". I believe it's an homage of sorts to Big Trouble in Little China, a Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall (pre-Sex in the City (OMG, she was wonderful in Mannequin!)) film of some note, a bit before that blogger's time, perhaps.

At the start of the story, Kitty is digging into the rumor that Civil War General Sherman may have been a werewolf, based on a journal account of one of his soldiers, but is having some difficulty getting anyone to allow her to have him exhumed for DNA testing. She asks her Conquistador vampire friend, Rick, about Sherman and other potential historical figures who were more than they seemed, and gets a clue that Wyatt Earp may have been a monster hunter, like her friend, Cormac. So she travels to Dodge City with Cormac and Ben to investigate rumors of a burned out den of vampires attributable to Earp. They encounter a crazed vampire while they are there, but deal with it easily, and the only thing left to mark the occasion is an old Roman coin on a string.

Kitty gets a call from Anastasia, the ancient vampire we met in Kitty's House of Horrors, asking for her help in recovering an object of power, The Dragon's Pearl, before the arch villain vampire, Roman, acquires it. Kitty, Ben and Cormac travel to San Francisco to help Anastasia, and end up in the middle of some ancient Chinese secrets (not Calgon). They journey with a guide, Grace Chen, whose ancestors swore to guard the Pearl centuries ago, into the heart of an underground maze in Chinatown, which is not exactly firmly grounded in our reality.

The Pearl turns out to be missing from its hiding place, and their work gets a bit more complex and hazardous. They encounter a few miscellaneous figures from Chinese myth, the Monkey King, the Hundun, and the Queen Mother of the West in their quest, and get some help from the vampire community in the city by the Bay. We get to learn, finally, about Anastasia's past, and a little more about Rick's, too.

A good read, setting things up well for a little bit of a new direction for Kitty and her pals.

Kitty Goes to War by Carrie Vaughn

With this, the latest in the series to date, Kitty's story gets back into the bi-or-trifurcated plot lines we're more familiar with. Cormac gets out of prison on parole and begins a new life. Kitty gets a call from Dr. Schumacher from the Center for the Study of Preternatural Biology asking her to help out with a group of werewolf soldiers returning from Afghanistan with PTSD. Kitty gets sued for libel by the CEO of Speedy Mart, who may or may not be a weather wizard using his franchises for nefarious purposes.

Cormac has definitely been changed by his prison experience. He can no longer work as a bounty hunter, since parole boards frown on parolees who carry weapons. Kitty started sending him books to read while he was confined, and he seems to have taken the reading and studying to an addictive level - not a bad thing IMHO. Kitty and Ben decide to hire him to do a little detective work on her other problem with the lawsuit, and turn him loose.

The werewolf soldiers take up a lot of Kitty's time in this novel. The pack leader was killed by an explosion in country, and the pack dominance struggles that ensued left only three of the men alive by the time they returned to the States. Neither Dr. Schumacher or the military leadership know whether they can be successfully integrated back into society, or if they'll remain hopelessly violent and uncontrollable. Kitty, bless her heart, seems to believe that no one is beyond redemption, and meets with the group where they are being held at first, then tries to integrate the least violent two men of the trio into her pack activities. The last member is definitely guilty of murder, and will probably never be released from the special military prison with silver bars and other security measures.

The Speedy Mart CEO turns out to definitely be up to something, and Kitty, Cormac and Ben must figure out what it is before he can hurt Kitty, her pack, or perhaps even the city of Denver.

In this book, we see some more growing up for Kitty, a whole new direction for Cormac, and creep forward a bit in the creepy vampire political scene.

Kitty's House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn

Unlike most of this series, in this book Kitty only has one major conflict plot line for a change. The only side plot of note is that Cormac the bounty hunter has a possibility of making parole, which gives Ben something to do while Kitty is off foiling evil plots on her own. Some TV reality show producers convince Kitty to join a group of other supernatural beings and psychics, a magician and a skeptic in a remote location for a pilot production.

Joining Kitty at a remote hunting lodge in Montana we have her old friend the psychic, Tina, her erstwhile ally the magician ,Odysseus Grant, another werewolf and pro wrestler, Jerome, a wereseal named Lee, two vampires, Gemma and Anastasia and their human blood donor Dorian, a professional debunker, Conrad, and a second psychic, Jeffrey, and another supernatural talk show host, Ariel. The producers' stated purpose is to let people know what the supernatural community is really all about, and to show their interactions in a close quarters situation, but there's a more serious game afoot.

This one eventually turns into something like Murder on the Orient Express, as first all of the production assistants are found murdered and the producers missing, and all communications with the outside world are cut. As Kitty and her friends try to figure out whodunnit and why, and try to escape the hunting lodge, they begin to be picked off one by one, by predators that know exactly how to kill them. If you're paying attention, you'll figure out who the red shirts (for you Trekkies) are pretty quickly and know who will leave Montana alive, in the end.

Good build of tension and release, some character development on Kitty's part, and things move forward in the Long Game, as well.

Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn

Just another fun and fast read in this series. Kitty returns from Vegas and finds that what happened in Vegas didn't completely stay there. She is being harassed by the group of were-felines whose leader she killed at the end of the last book. They've sent some sort of entity to attack her by setting things on fire, like the bar and restaurant in which she is part-owner.

At the same time, a very powerful vampire appears in Denver, claiming he knows what is attacking her and that he can drive it off. She and the Master of Denver, Rick, meet with the vampire and decline his help, for it's obvious he has some ulterior motive in the long game of vampire politics.

At the same time, Kitty gets involved with a group of tv people who are producing a popular ghost chasers show on tv, and exchanges interviews with them, going on one of their ghost chasing expeditions with them. The fire-starting entity causes some chaos during this one, and she enlists their aid in fighting it.

As I said before, it's fun, it's fast, and Kitty and friends work their usual magic.

Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn

I think I finally found a way to describe the way I feel about this series by Vaughn. It's like a bag of Twizzlers red licorice; if you have it readily available, you'll be forced to devour the entire thing in one sitting. This one took me about an hour and a half yesterday afternoon.

Kitty and Ben have decided that they need to formalize what their inner wolves already know, that they're mated for life. Discouraged by the complexity of planning a wedding, they decide to head to Las Vegas and get married there in one of the less tacky wedding chapels. Before they leave, the head vampire of Denver, Kitty's friend, Rick, gives her a note for the head vampire in Vegas, Dom, giving her a friendly introduction to the master of the city. Apparently, there are no werewolves in Vegas; the desert is simply too inhospitable to their wolf sides. Kitty's producer decides that this would be a great opportunity for Kitty to do her show on TV, in front of a live audience, and sets things up with his friends in Vegas to produce a show the day before her wedding.

When Kitty and Ben check into their hotel, they find out that there's a gun convention and exhibition going on. Ben, having been Cormac's partner in hunting down monsters, turns out to have a few acquaintances among the attendees, none of whom are thrilled with him associating with an "outed" werewolf, but they manage to avoid any gunfire in the early going.

Kitty meets with Dom, and tries to convince him to be a guest on her tv show, but the master vampire is uninterested in participating. The vampires in Vegas keep a low profile, preying on the many tourists passing through sin city. The vampires in his "court" appear to be a bunch of effete, vapid hedonists.

There may not be any werewolves in Vegas, but Kitty finds out that there may be some weretigers and werelions performing in an animal show there. She gets invited to come see their show by one of the weres in the show, and things start to get complicated after that.

Some of the bounty hunters from the gun show decide that going after Kitty, a famous were, would be good for their reputations, the animal show turns out to be more than a sideshow, and Dom's vampires turn out to be even less effective than they first appeared. All of this, I believe, is setting things up for stories dealing with a deeper game of vampire and were politics.

A good, fast, interesting read.

Kitty and the Silver Bullet by Carrie Vaughn

Kitty and her pack member/boyfriend, Ben, are living in Pueblo when they get the call from Kitty's family. Her mother has a lump on her breast which may be cancerous, and Kitty decides she must return to Denver, despite the danger from her old pack alphas, Carl and Meg, to support her family at this time.

Coincidentally, Kitty turns out to be pregnant and suffers a miscarriage right as this is happening. This bit of subplot actually adds quite a bit of emotional impact to the book as a whole, but something about Kitty's cluelessness about the fact of her pregnancy in the first place didn't ring completely authentically to me. I mean, she's been having unprotected sex with Ben for how long? And when she starts feeling nauseous when she's ordinarily healthy as a, well, lycanthrope, that isn't her first thought? Minor quibble...it was my first thought.

One of her old vampire friends, Rick, contacts her just before she leaves Pueblo and wants her to help him in his takeover of the city from its master vampire, Arturo. Though Kitty has a history with Arturo, and doesn't like him very much, she's unwilling to help at this time. She's still pretty much in run and hide mode after her bad experiences with the pack in Denver.

Kitty gets a call from an entertainer's agent, asking if she'd like to interview stage legend, Mercedes Cook, who has decided to "come out" as a vampire, and would like to do it on Kitty's radio show. This seems like a coincidence at the time, but it turns out that Ms. Cook is more devious than she seems at first, and stirs the pot quite handily in the vampire and were communities of Denver.

As you might expect, Kitty ends up getting dragged into the conflict, mostly against her will and better judgement. The entire novel, in my opinion, provides some much needed character development in the way of growing up and facing reality, that Kitty definitely needs. With the changing dynamics of this story arc, I'm most interested in seeing where the next novel takes us.

Kitty Takes a Holiday by Carrie Vaughn

I had to wait a long time to read this, the third in the Kitty Norville series by Vaughn. I'd put it on hold at the library, and either I was a long way down the waiting list, or someone kept it checked out for ages. After her ordeal in Washington DC, Kitty goes the Walden's Pond route and retreats to the wilderness, a small town in New Mexico, where she can write the book she's contracted for without any distractions. Unfortunately, the peaceful setting doesn't really motivate her to write, and she's taken to shapeshifting into her wolf form and going for long runs in the moonlight.

Soon, though, her peace is shattered by the appearance of Cormac, the bounty hunter, and Ben, her lawyer. Ben was gravely wounded by a werewolf while helping Cormac on one of his hunts, and has contracted the lycanthropic disease. Most people don't handle the transition to the werewolf way of life well on their own, so Kitty must adopt Ben as "pack" and help him through it. To complicate matters, some of the locals aren't excited about having the infamous Kitty Norville, werewolf, in their community, and some person or persons unknown are leaving curse markers and other, bloodier souvenirs at Kitty's mountain hideaway.

The bumbling locals have little real knowledge of the curses they're stirring up, and manage to attract a darker, deeper horror to the area. Kitty, Cormac, and Ben must figure out who's playing with fire, disperse the curse, and battle the evil the fools have aroused. All of this while dealing with the new relationship forced on Kitty and Ben by his new nature, and his emotional turmoil as he adapts to the situation. We know sharks and lawyers have a lot in common, but what about werewolves?

Some new little southwestern twists on shapeshifter lore in this one. Kitty, I think, begins to grow up a little and quit feeling quite so sorry for herself, as she has ever since the attack that made her a werewolf. She also starts to get over the guilt she feels for the death of her friend, TJ, when she challenged the Denver pack leader. Looking forward to a new installment to see what Kitty does next.

Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn

This is the second book in Vaughn's series. Kitty has been called to testify before Congress on the subject of werewolves and vampires, so she heads to Washington, DC. When she gets there, the head of the local vampire family, Alette, makes her an offer of hospitality she "can't refuse", and Kitty makes Alette's mansion her home away from home on the Potomac.

Kitty also makes contact with the local lycanthrope community, who operate without a traditional pack structure, and becomes romantically involved with a Brazilian were-panther, Luis. She manages to do the touristy thing while she's there, despite her time commitment to the hearings.

She also manages to collect a few more friends, and maybe some enemies, too. Her old friend, vampire hunter Cormac, puts in an appearance, not exactly a cameo. There's an old Nazi werewolf named Fritz whose story she tries to unearth, a reporter from the tabloid Uncharted World, Roger Stockton, and a psychic, Jeffrey Miles, who befriend her.

There's a lot going on behind the scenes in Washington, as one might expect, and Kitty has some interesting adventures there. This is another amusing story, but without a lot of depth. Should keep you entertained when the mundane doings on Capitol Hill can't.

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Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

This book reminds me of the Alpha and Omega series by Patricia Briggs, with its tale of a recently changed female werewolf who is at the bottom of the dominance heap in her pack. Kitty works as a DJ on a late night radio station, and when she begins to get some call-ins about supernatural creatures, she decides to go with the flow and encourage more discussion of vampires, werewolves and other things that go bump in the night.

Within a fairly short period of time, her show becomes very popular, and it's obvious that some of the local supernatural community are actually calling in to talk with her about their problems. This doesn't sit well with the Alpha of her pack, Carl, or the head of the local vampire family, Arturo. Carl wants her to quit doing the show, but with increased popularity comes a syndication offer, and Kitty is able to bribe him with half the money she makes from the new show to allow her to keep it on the air.

Arturo resents the way the show may interfere with his authority over the vampires in his family, and he takes a bit more oblique method to silence her, sending a professional hit man to kill her. Recognizing her as a bit of an expert on supernatural matters, the local police call her in to help out with a series of murders that may have been committed by a werewolf  (Can you say, "shades of Anita Blake?"). Kitty's also got problems with internal pack politics and dominance struggles to deal with, so things get a little bit complicated. On the whole, however, this novel doesn't rise to the level of serious intrigue, and we pretty well know who Kitty's allies and enemies are at any given time.

A good first novel in a series that has potential. Very quick and amusing read. I've already reserved #2 at the library.

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