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Kitty and the Midnight Hour$8.50 add to cart

How much fun can you have with a werewolf named Kitty? Turns out, a lot. Carrie Vaughn's urban fantasy series featuring radio personality (and werewolf) Kitty Norville proved to be one of my happier finds in recent months. After the jump I will do short reviews on the first three novels in the series.

Immediately after finishing Kitty and the Midnight Hour, I leapt into the sequel: Kitty goes to Washington, and from there to Book Three, Kitty Takes a Holiday. After a short break while I waited for my copy of Kitty and the Silver Bullet to arrive, I dove right back into the series. I can only think of a handful of established series that I have attacked with this kind of intensity -- Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld come immediately to mind. Now Carrie Vaughn joins my list of must read authors.

Kitty and the Midnight Hour: Kitty Norville, late night DJ and reluctant werewolf stumbles on to gold when she inadvertently opens up her show to calls from the supernatural world, solving their problems but creating far more of her own. Vaughn plays with familiar conventions in werewolf and vampire fiction to lay the groundwork for the expanding of her novels. Kitty, far from the usual "kick-ass" heroine of urban fantasy remains a strong character despite possessing a surprising vulnerability, and highlights that sometimes surviving is your only victory.

Kitty Goes to Washington: After being outed on the air as a werewolf, Kitty is subpoenaed to appear before a Senate commission regarding the existence of supernatural beings. One problem, the Senator responsible for the committee sees Vampires and Werewolves as forces of evil and darkness, and is willing to do anything to prove it to the U.S. and the world at large. This second novel expands and develops the world of the supernatural, building on clues and threads laid down in Kitty and the Midnight Hour. It is also an interesting examination of how the public reaction to hidden world being revealed.

Kitty Takes a Holiday: Badly in need of a break from the public eye, Kitty retreats to a cabin in the wilderness, but in her words, "while she wanted Walden, she gets Evil Dead." Having showcased more of Kitty's world in Kitty Goes to Washington, Vaughn now grows the supporting cast, with werewolf hunter Cormac and Kitty's lawyer, Ben getting a lot of face time. The fallout of this novel leads to a shift in the series dynamic, and one thing is for certain, Kitty has earned her place as heroine and major fantasy lead

See Also:

The Official Carrie Vaughn Website

An Interview With Carrie Vaughn

Inside Straight Edited by George R. R. Martin

Busted Flush Edited by George R. R. Martin