|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
KITTY GOES TO WASHINGTON takes everything I liked about KITTY AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR and builds on it. When we last saw Kitty Norville, her late night music and talk show had become a ratings bonanza when she was outed on air as a werewolf. The repercussions drove her out of town. She now lives on the road, doing her show from a different studio every night so that the enemies she made can't find her. But the US Government can find anyone. Kitty is summoned to Washington DC in order to give testimony at Senate hearings about the paranormal. As in the first book, the stated plot is only part of the complications thrown at our heroine. Good and bad things happen to her randomly and constantly, just as they do in real life. Washington DC is much stodgier than Denver, Kitty finds, but it's also far more cosmopolitan. The city masters, both vampire and were, have a much different approach than she's used to. The vampire runs the city with the help of an extended human family intertwined into services at all levels. There is no official werepack at all; only a bar open to all who shapeshift, including those who turn into other creatures and those visiting from other countries. Kitty finds the help of the vampire invaluable, the bar incredible, and the attentions of a Brazilian werejaguar desirable. On the political front, new friends and old enemies are called to testify, including the preacher Kitty crossed in the previous book. She finds herself responding to him in ways that she cannot control. Is he really a cure for lycanthropy? Or is he the leader of a dangerous cult? But while Kitty spends most of her time thinking of ways to deal with the supernaturals, she's forgotten the first two rules of life in this town. It's all about the public relations -- and everyone has a hidden agenda. I live near DC, so I was particularly interested in how it was portrayed. Vaughn gets it right without sounding like she's regurgitating a guidebook or passing on notes from a political blog. She also gets her characters right. With the sole exception of Senator Duke (a classic Bible-thumping bigot straight from Cliche Casting) all of the old ones stay in the characters they were given in the first book and the new ones are interesting and three-dimensional. Vaughn's pacing is also very good, in that she mixes up the subplots, solving some and opening others so that things don't flow in a predictable (and therefore boring) manner. A book about a werewolf with a talk show isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but for urban fantasy fans, KITTY GOES TO WASHINGTON delivers. It would help to read the series books in order, but enough information is given that you could start with this book and not feel lost. And as a bonus, the light short story Kitty Meets the Band is included.
Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, July 2006
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
