Kitty and the Silver Bullet

Kitty Norville is a successful talk show host with a boyfriend/lover who is a lawyer, a massive fan base, and she just happens to be a werewolf on top of it. So is her lover/mate. He was made by a different werewolf, but Kitty adopted him and now they are a pack of two. This doesn't prevent more shit-tastic stuff from happening in her life, however.

To start out with, after one night of life as a werewolf, she wakes up to a massive stomach-ache and some blood seeping out of places that for most women, are intensely private. Even though she knows that werewolves don't get sick, she goes to the doctor, only to learn that she had a miscarriage. This shocks her, mostly because she didn't even know she was pregnant. She calls up a researcher friend, to find out this is common with female werewolves. They will get pregnant, but the fetus cannot change and will be aborted whenever the female werewolf changes to her wolf form. Kitty, even though she didn't want to have kids right now, and didn't think she could get pregnant, is shocked and dismayed. She mourns the life of her fetus with Ben.

She also is approached by her Vampire friend Rick, telling her about an attack by Vampires on the patrons of a club in Denver, with multiple fatalities. Rick can see that Arturo, the current Master of Denver, isn't able to control the vampires there. As this is supposed to be his job, Rick has decided to attempt a coup and take over himself, as there doesn't seem to be anyone else with the power, or the cojones, for the job. But, he wants Kitty to support him. She doesn't want to get involved in any kind of war, so she turns him down.

But all of that gets put on the back burner when her family calls. Her mother is sick. Actually, they found a lump in her breast and need to biopsy it to see if it is cancerous. Kitty promises to return home, even though her former Alpha, Carl, has told her that he would kill her if she ever came back to Denver. Carl, although the leader of the pack of werewolves Kitty ran away from, is real scum, having a strongly sadistic streak and is given to raping women, when not abusing everyone around him in other ways. His mate, Meg, is another piece of work, who actively eggs him on and watches him when he abuses others. Both of them are truly incompetent when it comes to leading the pack, but the sadism and abuse they deal out to the others in the pack allows them to stay on top. Kitty, who was dealt the most abuse by Carl, is terrified of him. Just the thought of encountering him again is enough to send her running, or to make her hyperventilate.

She returns to Denver, hoping to stay low and avoid Carl and Meg, but when she is approached by the manager for the singing (and acting) diva named Mercedes Cook, she is surprised to find out that Ms. Cook is a vampire, and she wants to come out as one and be interviewed by Kitty on her show. Kitty agrees and also goes to see a show by Mercedes as part of her sold-out concert tour. The Interview goes smoothly, and the next day, Kitty and Ben are invited by Mercdes to her room at her hotel for a drink. When she arrives, she finds that Rick is already there, and he's somewhat annoyed that she has come to Denver when she said she would never return the last time he asked her. And even worse, when Mercedes' other guests arrive and they turn out to be Armando, the Master of the City and Carl and Meg. A fight nearly ensues when it turns out that Mercedes has played Kitty like a fish on a line, and the personality she pretended to is anything but the real thing.

They are able to get out without a fight, barely, and Kitty is all for fleeing the city immediately. Ben tells her she can, but she will be leaving without him. Kitty goes, but ends up only visiting Cormac, Ben's brother, in prison. Cormac was a hunter of supernatural things, and he almost stalked Kitty before realizing she was a good person. However, after a number of foes tracked Kitty to a cabin where she was writing a book in the last novel, Cormac took the fall for the deaths that resulted. His years of monster-hunting have given him a lot of information, though, and he tells Kitty that she will keep running unless she takes Carl out. He even gives her a plan for doing so.

Realizing that Ben stands no chance alone, and mainly because she loves him, Kitty returns. One night after her show, she is approached by Jenny, a new member of Carl's Pack. Jenny is young and afraid, a former teenage club-goer seduced by Carl who agreed to become a werewolf because she was in love with him. Now, however, she has Kitty's former place in the pack, as the one Carl most often beats and abuses. She wants the abuse to end, but she still loves him. Kitty has a talk with her, but tells Jenny that Jenny must really want to leave before Kitty will help her. Jenny takes Kitty's card and leaves, but calls her later that night and asks Kitty to help her leave.

Kitty takes Jenny in and helps her makes arrangements to leave the city and stay with Alette, a vampire in Washington D.C. The day arrives and Ben takes Jenny to the airport, leaving her at the gate. But she never arrives and seems not to even have gotten on the plane. Kitty is sad, but becomes devastated when Jenny's body turns up in a warehouse, along with Rick's supporters in his war against Armando, all slaughtered by werewolves and other vampires. Worse, Jenny died long before the others did. Since Carl and Armando are allied, Kitty knows who killed Jenny and the others. This finally makes her take off the kid gloves and decide to deal with Carl and Meg once and for all.

She recruits a member of Carl's pack named Shaun, and with Ben, the three of them go to her old Pack's range and mark all over it with their own scent as a declaration of war. The next morning, they are approached by Becky, another member of Carl's pack, who tells them Carl is going to be mighty pissed, but that she would rather join their pack than remain in Carl's, and she does so.

Carl makes threats against Kitty, but tells her he will go against the things she loves rather than herself or the nucleus of the new pack, and Kitty is afraid for her family. She works with her new pack, the police, and Rick to keep her family safe. Instead, Carl goes after the radiostation where she used to work, KNOB, but she finds out and heads him off there. Some of the wolves are arrested, but Carl gets away. Rick has recruited her in payment for helping her keep her family safe, and she gets caught up in the war with Rick and Armando again, which leads to her finding out that Rick's lieutenant and shape-shifting friend is actually working for Mercedes Cook, who is behind the conflict between Rick and Armando. The Conflict ends, more or less successfully, and Kitty finds out that Ben and Rick's friend were sent to take out Carl. Kitty leaves to find them and rescue Ben, and kills Meg before the rest of the pack take down Carl and eat him. The book ends with Ben proposing to Kitty and she accepting his ring, which looks like silver, but is actually white gold, as something of a joke between them.

This book seems like it might be the transition point in the series, with Kitty undergoing several life changes (having a miscarrige, having a parent get exremely sick and nearly die, facing up to a major fear in her life, taking on the responsibility for a new pack, and getting engaged- all in one book), and, through two of them, she will have to give up her nomad ways of the former books, and settle down in one place. Despite that, it was pleasant seeing Kitty take charge of her life, and both growing and maturing in the process.

We also get to learn a lot more about vampires, and about Rick and the "Long Game" of the vampires. Carrie Vaughn here is in full form, giving an entertaining book that fairly sings along, carrying the reader along with the story. While not frenetic, the pacing is smooth throughout, never feeling rushed or forced. I wish many more authors were as good as Ms. Vaughn!

Next up, "Frobisher's Savage" by Leonard Tourney, a historical mystery set in Elizabethan times.