Jacey Bedford's Journal

Carrie Vaughan: Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Kitty is a recently-turned werewolf, the baby of the pack, who is also a late night radio presenter for a Denver station. When her show turns into a phone-in for vampires, werewolves, witches and things that go bump in the night, her bozo of a pack leader, Carl wants her to give it up, and so does Arturo, head of the local Vampire family. It’s bringing their world out into the open and neither of them want that. Kitty bribes Carl, but Arturo is another matter. When Arturo sends bounty hunter Cormac against her while the show’s on air, Kitty talks her way out of it, and later gains brownie points with Arturo by helping a vampire in distress, but her troubles aren’t over. Outed as a werewolf on air, she ends up helping the local cops with a series of mauling murders, which makes her even less popular with Carl and also with Meg, the pack’s alpha female, but Kitty the pup is learning to stand up for herself.

The pack is in trouble. Carl and Meg are having relationship issues and Carl wants Kitty to replace Meg, which is the last thing Kitty wants. Although her wolf responds to wolf-Carl, the human Kitty knows that the human Carl is a total shit. Her werewolf friend TJ, Carl’s second, stands up for her, but can’t face down the whole pack, so Kitty’s ends up calling on Cormac as things come to a head

Carrie Vaughan knows how to write a tense, well-paced novel. This was recommended to me because I enjoyed Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson novels, and I can see the similarities – and differences. While writing a series, Briggs manages to make each book complete in itself, even though a few ends are left open for the next book.

I was really enjoying this book right until the very end... and then I felt like I’d eaten a delicious meal, but missed out on the dessert. The ending is obviously designed to lead straight on to the second book, but I would have liked more internal resolution. There are too many loose ends. Yes the serial mauler gets sorted out, but the main question of what’s wrong with the pack is left open and Kitty just walks away from it. That seems to be the biggest downer for me. She loses her best friend and can do nothing about it. The attraction between Kitty and Cormac is not resolved in any way at all. (I hope he’s a recurring character, but the way it was left – I really don’t know if he will be.) There’s the mystery of the strange radio on-air caller from the unnamed government agency who’s obviously just in there to lead into the second novel ‘Kitty Goes to Washington.’ That last loose end is fine – if only Kitty had sorted out the pack and kissed (or more) Cormac.

I guess I’ll just have to read the next one – which, of course, is entirely what Ms Vaughan intends.
:-)

Stephenie Meyer: Twilight

Warning – extreme spoilers ahead. Stop reading now if you intend to read this for yourself.

I admit that I only read this to see what all the fuss was about. I went to see the movie first and stood next to a sixteen year old boy in the queue who was so full of Twilight that it was his second time to see the movie, this time with his sister after buying her the book. It was not only his favourite book, but on further enquiry he didn’t really read fiction at all. The queue started to move before I could ask him: why Twilight?

( Spoilers behind the cut )

Bella never gets the opportunity to grow and you get the impression that with Edward Cullen as a boyfriend, she never will. I may be wrong, but I’m not going to read the rest of the books to find out. One was enough. For me it’s a book about repression and subjugation. Is that what’s turning on teens these days?