Tag: carrue-vaughn • BookLikes

In "Kitty Steals The Show", Kitty accepts an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a scientific conference on the supernatural. The conference is in London which, of course, makes Kitty A Werewolf In London, a line the novel wouldn't have been complete without and which provided me with a soundtrack as I listened to the audiobook.

The book starts with a welcome return to the familiar as we get to listen to more of Kitty's talk show and experience the space she's created where the isolated can feel mainstream. I love Kitty's shows because I like who she is on the show.

I also liked that we saw Kitty with her pack for once. She and Ben are settling into their roles as alphas and starting to enjoy themselves and plan for the future rather than feeling that leadership is a task thrust on them by circumstance.

Moving the action to London provides a new setting and introduces new characters. London, through the eyes of an American in Europe for the first time, is reasonably well drawn. I liked the way Carrie Vaughn picked up on themes in British and European history and politics and used them to shape the supernatural word. The leading British vampires are aristocratic, entitled, and manipulative in a polite, highly cultured and slightly dispassionate way. Their European counterparts are decadent, old-school vampires who keep werewolves as slaves. The British werewolves, it turns out, have not accepted slavery. Nor have they remained in small packs, each with their own territory. Instead they have come together under a single, charismatic but decidedly working class, leader.

We revisit the Long Game and Kitty finds herself up against familiar enemies. There is a strong sense of the gravitational pull from the coming war dragging Kitty into a role she may not be equipped for, has little desire to occupy but is unable to walk away from.

At the end of the book, we return to Kitty's talk show, which she is using as a platform to warn the world of the menace of the Long Game. One of Kitty's listeners asks her to remember why she set up the show: to help those who had nowhere else to go. That's the Kitty who hooked me into this series, not the uber-alpha werewolf leader. That's the Kitty I hope to see more of in the next books.