2011 early July books: Vaughn
I've been busy with my company's annual conference where I didn't read anything beyond a newspaper. I did manage to read a book and some e-novellas before it started.
This is about an on-going series. It may well contain spoilers, but they should be mild. If you hate any kind of spoilers, you may not want to read it.
Kitty's Big Trouble is the latest book about Kitty Norville by Carrie Vaughn. This is a fun series. It recently changed publishers because Vaughn wanted to write non-Kitty books. That seems a bit short-sighted by the publisher when you've got a hit series on your hands. The series was snatched up by Tor.
Kitty is a night-time DJ who, on a whim, decides one night to start talking about supernatural issues. The show becomes a big hit, probably because Kitty herself is a werewolf. Earlier books found her breaking free of her first pack and setting up her own and were narrowly focused in her home town in Colorado. Later books have ranged across the country and are opening up into one of those widespread-vampire-led-conspiracies that show up a lot. Anyway, that's a minor note in an overall very good series.
In this book, Kitty, her husband, Ben, and his cousin, Cormac, head to San Francisco. Kitty is asked to and help the vampire Anastasia acquire a magical object before bad guy vampire Roman does so. Roman appears to be trying to take over as many vampires as he can (weres are fodder). I have to admit I don't really remember anything about Anastasia and Roman from the earlier books, which reduced some of the emotional impact. ("Oh, no, it's Roman!" Umm, okay) They are like popcorn. I should probably re-read the series sometime.
Cormac, former vampire/werewolf hunter, is now a convicted felon and on parole. As such, he's not allowed to carry a gun. He's making do with magical objects now that he's hosting a 19th century witch. Yeah, it's getting strange.
One thing that got me at the end is that Kitty plans to go to England. cormac makes a statement about whether he can even get a passport. Oh, probably, but England doesn't have to let him in, and likely won't. I wonder if Vaughn will cover that in the next book?
I still recommend this series. We have forward movement on plot and characters unlike some other urban fantasy series. Kitty is pushy and talkative but it's great having a character that would rather discuss a problem and try to find a solution or persuade someone to help first. I don't recomment this book as an intro to the series though. Start at the beginning with Kitty and the Midnight Hour.