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Kitty Goes To War

Carrie Vaughn

Published 2010               334 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

Kitty Norville, Alpha werewolf and host of The Midnight Hour, a radio call-in show, is contacted by a friend at the NIH's Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. Three Army soldiers recently returned from the war in Afghanistan are being held at Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs. They're killer werewolves – and post traumatic stress has left them unable to control their shape-shifting and unable to interact with people. Kitty agrees to see them, hoping to help by bringing them into her pack.   

Meanwhile, Kitty gets sued for libel by CEO Harold Franklin after featuring Speedy Mart – his nationwide chain of 24-hour convenience stores with a reputation for attracting supernatural unpleasantness – on her show. 

Very bad weather is on the horizon. 

The Review

Kitty Goes To War is the eighth book in Carrie Vaughn’s bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series. Series fans should know what to expect by now – plenty of supernatural action and adventure, stories populated with believable characters who deal with the supernatural in realistic ways, all wrapped up with the occasional light touch of humour. With Kitty Goes To War, Vaughn once again delivers all of the above.

There isn’t a huge amount of vampire action in this story. Kitty’s interaction with the undead is limited to a brief social visit from Rick, Denver’s master vampire. Instead of vampires, Kitty has to simultaneously deal with militarised werewolves, in need of serious rehabilitation to “normal” werewolf life, and a death threat from a weather-wielding wizard assassin. The plotline doesn’t further the long-running story arc, involving a shadowy vampire threat hanging of Kitty and Rick’s heads, but works well as a stand alone interlude. The vampire threat hasn’t gone away but takes a back seat, allowing readers get a slice of Kitty’s chaotic werewolf life and to catch up with developments for secondary characters (namely Cormac).

The Green Beret werewolves keep Kitty running from one problem to another and the story has a fast-paced action plotline as a result. The mystery of the Speedy Mart stores is suitability bizarre and the thrill-killer wizard assassin gives Cormac a larger role in the story and a chance to show his new skills. Carrie Vaughn has been promising a novella to tell Cormac’s tale for some time now, Kitty Goes To War just serves to whet reader appetite for that story further. What she reveals about Cormac is more intriguing than when he was a man of unknown mystery. In my opinion Cormac is such a great character, with a realistic personality and genuine conflicts that I’m sure he could give her enough material for a spin-off series, rather than just a short novella!

Summing-up, Kitty Goes To War is another exciting and entertaining urban fantasy novel from Carrie Vaughn. Series fans will be pleased to see that the Kitty Norville series shows no sign of running out of steam anytime soon with Vaughn consistently writing quality instalments and finding ways to keep the plotlines and characters fresh – which is a great achievement eight books into a series written in a genre that is often littered with derivative clichés.

This book is highly recommended for urban fantasy fans who are tired of ridiculously gung-ho urban fantasy protagonists. Enjoy.

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