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Kitty and The Silver Bullet

Carrie Vaughn

Published 2008       326 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

Kitty's radio show is as popular as ever and she has a boyfriend who actually seems to understand her. Can she finally settle down to a normal life?  Not if this is just the calm before the storm. 

When her mother falls ill, Kitty rushes back to Denver - and right back to the abusive pack of werewolves she escaped a year ago.  To make matters worse, a war is brewing between the city's two oldest vampires, threatening the whole supernatural community.  Though she wants to stay neutral, Kitty is again drawn into a world of politics and violence. 

To protect her family, her lover, and herself, she'll have to choose sides.  And maybe become what she hates - a killer.

The Review

Kitty and The Silver Bullet is Carrie Vaughn’s fourth novel in her popular urban fantasy Kitty series.  To me, seeing the name Carrie Vaughn on the cover of a novel is synonymous with “guaranteed good read” and Kitty and The Silver Bullet is no exception to this rule.

While each novel in this series is a stand alone story and can be read in isolation or out of reading order, I would recommend reading the books in order.  Mostly because the character that Kitty has become in Kitty and The Silver Bullet is not the same Kitty that she was in Kitty and The Midnight Hour.  Her subsequent adventures have moulded her into an altogether stronger person and this journey is documented over the course of several novels.

Readers who have followed the adventures of Kitty, werewolf and late night talk show radio DJ, from the very beginning (Kitty and The Midnight Hour) will have seen Kitty’s character develop from a submissive wolf scared of her own shadow to a more dominant and independent alpha wolf. 

In Kitty and The Silver Bullet, Kitty has come full circle as she returns to Denver, the city where her former wolf pack runs.  The pack’s alpha pair, Meg and Carl, exiled Kitty from Denver a year previously never to return.  Her best friend T.J. wasn’t so lucky and paid for Kitty’s freedom (and Meg and Carl’s power hungry madness) with his life.

Kitty doesn’t return to settle old scores or take revenge; she goes back to Denver to visit her mother who is seriously ill.  She would have happily kept out of the way of her old pack and avoided any confrontations but the Denver vampires have different ideas.  Vampire politics are murky at best – fatal at worse - and with two master vampires battling it out for the control of Denver it isn’t long before Kitty is forced to pick sides.

The previous Kitty novels haven’t always had much too much vampire content but Kitty and The Silver Bullet makes up for this with most of the focus being on the vampire power struggle.  Tantalising hints of a larger vampire master plan and controlling organisation are revealed giving the impression that the reader hasn’t seen the end of Kitty’s vampire related problems even as the power struggle resolves itself in this story.

The quality of Carrie Vaughn’s story telling is, as ever, first rate.  Once again she has delivered a fast paced, exciting urban fantasy populated with both likeable and realistic characters.  Kitty’s quiet strength makes her a more believable character than some of the more gung-ho female protagonists littering the urban fantasy landscape today (and yes, you know who I’m talking about!)

All in all, Kitty and The Silver Bullet is an entertaining read that shouldn’t fail to satisfy both werewolf and vampire fans alike.

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