Review: Carrie Vaughn

Just as a mild warning, there are some passages involving sex and whatnot in this entry. Really though, Book Love Affair is focused towards all genres of adult fiction, so this shouldn't surprise anyone.

Title: Kitty and the Midnight Hour Author: Carrie Vaughn Format: MM Available Formats: Kindle, Sony eBook Page Count: 272 Genre: Urban/Dark Fantasy Publisher: Grand Central Publishing Pub. Date: November 1, 2005 ISBN-13: 9780446616416

Kitty Norville works by night as a DJ on a midnight radio show and spends the rest of her time as a werewolf. Or, rather, a woman fighting her inner werewolf. Kitty begins to encourage her callers to talk about the paranormal on her radio show, which then rapidly morphs into a hit talk radio hour called--you guessed it--"The Midnight Hour". That's right, Kitty is the Dr. Laura Schlessinger of vampires and werewolves. Well, Dr. Laura without the "Woman, get pregnant and get into that kitchen because your man deserves his servant-wife!" spiel.

That isn't to say that Kitty is the normal, resourceful female protagonist. In fact, one of the major reasons I couldn't get into the "Kitty series" was because of Kitty's character. Well that and the fact that I just couldn't stomach some of the leaps of logic that Vaughn tried to pull off. (Seriously, I doubt anyone is going to accuse a near victim of an assassin of harboring sexual tension or a crush for said assassin. Especially the night after the murder was supposed to take place. Give me some development and I might try to suspend my disbelief.) Overall, though, I just did not like Kitty. I realize that Vaughn wants to mature the character into her own power and self confidence, but some passages were downright creepy:

"He nibbles her ear, licks her jaw, sucks her throat, and pulls himself on top of her, leveraging her legs apart with his weight. She moans and lets him in; he pushes slowly, gently. This is what she lives for--his attention, his adoration. Speaking in her ear he says, 'I'll take care of you, and you don't ever need to grow up. Understand?' "

You can judge, maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but the factor of how skeevy so many parts seemed just rubbed me the wrong way. Even in a coming of age (even if it's a mental/power coming of age rather than actual age), it just seemed...skeevy.

There were only two reasons I kept trudging through Kitty and the Midnight Hour. One of these was to see the asshole speaking above get what was coming to him. I won't spoil what happens, but let's say it was disappointing. The second reason was because I really did enjoy Vaughn's very true-to-nature look at the wolf pack. Rather than the glossed over the wolfiness of werewolves. Alternately, I wish that Vaughn had done a little more even with this conflict between Kitty and her wolf-self. Perhaps she'll address that conflict in later books. However, a little originality in perspective of the paranormal and a good possible conflict can't save this series. And so, I won't be picking up any of the 5 following "Kitty" books.


Quick and Dirty: Not My Type.
There's a huge number of urban fantasy books and series out right now. I'm sure that any number of them are better than the "Kitty Norville" series. I highly recommend trying out Patricia Briggs instead for werewolf fun. Or, if you're looking for a good female protagonist, try out Ilona Andrews' Magic Bites.