Title: Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday & Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Author: Carrie Vaughn
Series: Kitty Norville
Published: 2005 – 2009 by Grand Central Publishing
Read: December 6. – 9. 2013
Format: ebook
Genre: Urban fantasy, werewolves
Right now this is the urban fantasy series I am recommending people if I know they like urban fantasy. So far I read the first 4 books in this series in four days. Yes I think this a good series.
A while back I made a post about how I define urban fantasy, and I defined four different strains of urban fantasy. The Kitty Norville series falls into the strain I call: A world you don’t see. The series is a great example of this series. Kitty is a werewolf but nobody but other werewolves knows that she is anything special. She hosts a night time radio show playing music and taking calls.
The setup is pretty simple, what happens when the people listening to her show starts talking about the supernatural (werewolves and vampires mostly) and she is taking them seriously, the world starts to take the idea of them being real seriously. This in itself is a great setup and one I find really interesting.
Kitty (yes that is a horrible name to a werewolf and yes she gets teased) is a way more capable woman that what she gives herself credit for and she is way braver than she thinks she is. She starts standing up for herself, stops being the omega in the pack and then trouble really starts, now doesn’t it. There are great character growth in this series, not just in Kitty but also in the people around her. There are a lot of coming out stories in this book, not coming out as gay, but as werewolves, which are very emotional but also handled with humor.
I can’t talk too much about what really makes this series interesting without being spoilery, and I would rather not, at least not in this post. And I can’t talk about the interesting themes of the later books without being spoilery. I might write a review of the next book I read in the series and I promise to go into more detail then.
The books are quite funny, fast moving and entertaining. It is surprisingly entertaining to read the talk radio shows that she does. She is witty and sharp and she has the weirdest callers which is awesome. In the later books there is a very nice romance as well, without the books slipping into paranormal romance (not that there is anything wrong with that, if that is what you are in the mood for). There are chewy bits in between the the ice cream which makes it a more interesting read.
The stats:
Author: female, white, US resident
Protagonist: Kitty Norville: female, white, radio host, straight, able-bodied
Setting: Denver, USA, present day
