Liviania’s review of Kitty Goes to War (Kitty Norville, Book Eight) by Carrie Vaughn
Urban fantasy published by Tor 29 Jun 10

The Kitty Norville series is both consistent and surprising.  Carrie Vaughn does a good job of giving the Kitty series a unique feeling among the sea of urban fantasies available.  For one, the series remains light-hearted despite the high body count.

Vaughn doesn’t handle the body count as well in Kitty Goes to War as she did in Kitty’s House of Horrors.  Instead of characters we’ve learned to love dying, the lives of entirely new characters are at risk.  Vaughn does what she can, but with two plots going on I didn’t learn to love the new guys.  The new guys are a group of soldiers who were discovered to be werewolves after their commanding officer died.  Now, Kitty has been enlisted to help get them under control and useful.

The other plot involves Harold Franklin, the CEO of Speedy Mart – a Walmart where supernatural events tend to happen.  It also involves Cormac, though he’s off screen for too much of the novel.  I’ve been waiting with bated breath to read more about him since he left prison.  Vaughn teases us throughout the novel with the knowledge that he somehow changed in prison, but has to keep Cormac off screen to pull the twist off.  However, it does provide for interesting situations in his future appearances.

Yet Cormac’s appearances do help to confirm that the Ben-Kitty relationship is going well.  There are also some funny bits with Ben and the military, who don’t realize that Ben is a closeted werewolf.  I was, like most, originally surprised that Ben and Kitty got together.  But with each book I like their marriage more.  They’re very stable.  They trust each other and work to protect each other’s backs.

It’s also engaging to watch Kitty assert herself as a leader of the soldiers.  She’s managed to climb to the top of the ladder from the bottom, and now she goes into confrontations with confidence.  Kitty’s emotional arc is one of the greatest strengths of the series.

Kitty Goes to War is an acceptable place to start the series.  Some events in the novel pertain to the series arc, but it stands alone well.  After all, Kitty is introducing the soldiers to normal werewolf life.  It’s rare that eight books in a series is still inviting to new readers.

Grade: B

Summary:
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.

Read an excerpt here. (Follow directions of site.)

Other books in this series: