RogerBW's Blog

Kitty Steals the Show, Carrie Vaughn 19 March 2020

2012 urban fantasy, tenth in the series. Kitty Norville, the late-night DJ who has become the world's most famous werewolf, goes to London to give the keynote speech at the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies. It will not go smoothly.

This book is more about moving the series onwards than about telling a single-volume cohesive story, and I'd definitely not recommend reading it in isolation.

Kitty has realised that what she's best at is not being a furry death machine but talking, persuading people to examine their actions and viewpoints and perhaps change them a bit. And she spends a lot of the book doing that, so if you wanted lots of fights and smooches Jeanine Frost-style this isn't the urban fantasy for you.

Her husband Ben is back to being an effective character because his skills as a lawyer are at least somewhat useful here, and Ben's brother Cormac (still semi-possessed and coming to terms with it) has a side story which while it's not full of conflict certainly offers some development.

In this world, any werewolf can beat up any human, and any vampire can beat up any werewolf – but that's assuming a level playing field, which most of the people here aren't so stupid as to allow. Even so, this has led to a tradition of werewolves serving vampires, and the major change in this book consists of the European werewolves noticing that their masters really don't have their interests at heart… and that there are alternative ways of doing things. Perhaps it's a little White Saviour, but I felt that Kitty was effectively giving the one last push needed to bring on something that might have happened eventually anyway.

This is definitely well outside the urban fantasy standards, in a quite different direction from the Kate Daniels series, but it's continuing to work for me. Four-ish books to go in the main series.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Kitty's Greatest Hits | Series: Kitty Norville | Next in series: Kitty Rocks the House

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