Kitty and the Silver Bullet: Seen it all before

Kitty and the Silver Bullet by Carrie Vaughn

Carrie Vaughn’s KITTY NORVILLE series is yet another example of what’s happened to the typical urban fantasy series. For the most part, you could take stories we’ve seen before, cut and paste pieces of them together, and getKitty and the Silver Bullet.

Kitty, an infected werewolf, is still an outcast from her pack. She is still doing her radio show about the paranormal community and she gets involved in a direct challenge for dominance of a city between two powerful vampires. The local werewolf pack gets caught up in it, which forces Kitty to revisit the drama and conflict she has with the leaders of the pack.

The positives: At least Kitty and the Silver Bullet has enough different characters to get to know that you don’t get bored. The plot moves along pretty well and Vaughn doesn’t make the mistake of telling the reader what everyone is thinking. You also get some interesting insight on Vaughn’s paranormal culture. That part’s not bad at all.

The negatives: I can’t stand Kitty. In Kitty and the Silver Bullet she is just all over the place. One minute she’s ready to fight with someone and rip them to pieces and the next she’s lying on the floor at someone else’s feet begging them to spare her mom. I just wanted to yell at her to stop whining. There was too much drama all at once. I would have preferred a few tragic events that are well developed and fully explained than Vaughn’s method of throwing multiple plot hooks (from a miscarriage to a friend’s death) together to see what comes out. I understand that life doesn’t feed us tragedy in manageable portions, but when reading a novel for pleasure, it was almost more than I could stand.

For the urban fantasy lover who finds him/herself happy with most of what’s out there today, this book will be fine. It won’t be one that you are going to rave about, but it’s decent. For someone who expects more from a novel than a soap opera dressed in urban fantasy clothes, Kitty and the Silver Bullet is pretty weak.