Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Some books slide right into my mind as if there was already a slot there, waiting for them. My imagination lights up like a fairground, my mouth smiles, my eyes are fixed on the movie screen in my head and the world becomes a barely registered background noise.

"Kitty And The Midnight Hour" had this effect on me. It soothed me with a light, fun, fresh tone and then gripped me with darker themes, handled for their human impact, not their sensational value.

Kitty Norville is a werewolf (yeah, yeah, the name came first, what's a girl supposed to do about that?) and a damaged young woman, unsure of herself, habitually but unhappily submissive, living in the ruins of the life that was taken from her when she was turned against her will.

She has show more survived by grace of being part of a Pack which offers her protection and companionship as long as she accepts her status at the bottom of the hierarchy and keeps her true nature secret.

Kitty's main source of solace and personal identity comes from hosting an unremarkable late-night radio show playing old, sorry, classic pop music. One night, she decides to take calls from listeners and accidentally creates "The Midnight Hour. The show that isn't afraid of the dark or the people who live there". When the talk-show takes off Kitty's life grows more and more complicated as the demands of her Pack and of the supernatural powers that be conflict with her desire to go on with a show that is drawing attention to a world that is supposed to be secret.

I've grown used to books imposing pack behavior on werewolves so I was almost as slow as Kitty in understand that her Alpha is truly abusive, no matter how much the wolf in her wants to roll on her back and show him her belly. Kitty's personal growth in the face of this abuse is one of the most interesting things in the book.

The book is packed with action, including multiple fights between the wolves, which Carrie Vaughn describes vividly, sustaining excitement without resorting to too much gore.

The radio show itself is wonderful. If it was on the air, I'd be a regular listener. The tone is exactly right for a good talk-show and it provides a great vehicle for getting to know the supernatural world and its denizens.

The audiobook, and this is a PERFECT novel for an audiobook, is narrated by Marguerite Gavin (go HERE to read an interview with her). I've spent hours listening to Marguerite Gavin narrating the Kate Shugak books. I has stupidly assumed that I knew what her voice was like. Now I realize that I was listening to what she thinks Kate Shugak (a thirty-something Aluet with a damaged voice) sounds like. Marguerite Gavin's Kitty is younger and, of course, has a great voice for radio. It's a great achievement and it means I'll be looking hard at the (many) 0ther books she's narrated.

I'm hooked on Kitty Norville now. The first book provides lots of teasers on what might happen next and I want to hear more episodes of Kitty's show, so book two, "Kitty Goes To Washington" will be pushing its way to the top of my TBR pile very soon. show less

And now we talk about me and my thoughts. As I do. We're going to start with what I really did not like. Kitty herself says it when she says that if she and Carl (her pack alpha) were human she'd be encouraged to leave him because his behavior toward her is abuse. She's the youngest werewolf in the pack, she eats last, she has no standing, she's at the bottom of the hierarchy. It's... squicky. It's okay for wolves in the wild, I've watched the documentaries, I get all that, but Kitty is a human, at least until she changes into a wolf, and it really is abuse. Carl tells her what to do, who to see, slaps her around, and ends it with sex. I can't tell you how not okay with that I am, and how happy I am that by the end Kitty had learned to show more stand up to him and left the pack, because I would not have been coming back for more if that was going to continue.

It bothered me that with all the emphasis on wolf behavior that in the end Meg, the alpha's wife and the alpha female, used very human means to get what she wanted. Very unwolflike. She didn't fight, she didn't even respect her mate. It is wolves that mate for life, isn't it? I think it is. If you want your werewolves to act like wolves, then fine, but you really should not use that excuse to make with the sex and humiliation for Kitty (it smacks of plot device, btw, not kinky sex because it isn't overly detailed) and then throw aside the wolf behaviors when it suits your plot to do that. It works to a degree for Kitty while she attempts to reconcile her human and werewolf sides, but it does not work for the alpha female who has long since reconciled these sides.

I ended up liking Kitty very much. She's got some things to deal with and she knows that. Her current strengths become even more obvious when you learn the story of how she became a werewolf and how she wasn't truly adult or independent at that time. She then went straight to the pack and depended upon them for everything. She's got a hard road now and I'm interested in seeing how she makes out with that.

I'm torn about Cormac. He could end up being a great character, he could end up being cheesetastic and lame. He and Kitty are right now on the same side, and that's good, they have some sexual tension which could be played on, but he's also a supernatural executioner and they met because he was hired to kill her. Problematic. They got over it awfully easily, and I'm not so sure that's great. Iffy, as I said.

Love the radio show idea. I kept waiting for Kitty's revelation to backfire or to just be more than it was. I would have thought people would have doubted her or wanted to kill the mutie freak, but neither happened. I didn't feel as if I had enough from the book to have that make sense to me. Right now the universe is aware of supernatural beings and seems to be accepting them, but it happened so fast.

The interview with the author of the vampire books cracked me right the fuck up. OH HAI THAR ANNE RICE. Bwah! Vaughn did this great thing at the end of that interview and turned a skewering of a popular author into a touching moment and I think that might have been when I started to like this book.

Kitty's producer and her sound guy--Ozzy and Tom???--could have been fleshed out more, but I liked them because Kitty liked them and because she thinks of them as "the pack you make." Yep, that's my thing, that's what gets me. I'll be continuing with the series. show less

Kitty is a radio DJ in Denver who just happens to be a werewolf. When someone calls in and she starts giving otherworldly advice, a late-night show for vampires, werewolves and the like becomes "The Midnight Hour." But Kitty's new show isn't popular with everyone - a bigwig vampire named Arturo talks her pack leader Karl into telling her to stop, and someone's out for Kitty's life.

I'm not sure quite what to make of this first book in the series, though I think much of my trouble comes from listening to it as an audiobook. I'm just not an aural learner, so it takes longer for me to "read" through and I miss more details. The premise was interesting, the story compelling, and explaining werewolf pack and vampire family dynamics was decent show more worldbuilding, though at the same time entirely messed up. I liked Kitty as a character and seeing her come into her own, though some of the scenes were too violent for my taste. A promising start for fans of urban paranormal fantasy series. show less

This has been on my to-read list for a WHILE, but there’s only so much paranormal romance I can read at once, so between Jeaniene Frost, Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, and Kelley Armstrong, I’ve been pretty booked — so to speak. But, I’ve finally found the time to read this, and I am glad I did.

My favorite part is that the supernatural world is actually portrayed by Kitty as being weird. She doesn’t blindly accept werewolf rules and completely buy into the alpha/pack thing — it freaks her out and she’s constantly trying to reconcile what she knows as a human and how she feels as a wolf, which was interesting and unique, at least in terms of comparing to other paranormal books I’ve read. I also like that she starts show more off as the bottom of the pack and has that conflict between her human life and wolf life. Basically, Vaughn does a great job in contrasting Kitty’s wolf and human life and putting them in constant conflict. It makes for an engaging read.

I do think the “romance” between Kitty and the hunter was handled a little clumsily. I get that they need to have somewhat of an attraction for each other in order to move the story forward, but I think it was rather awkwardly fast, even with all of the drama going on. As a rule, I don’t particularly like how a lot of romance is done in books anyway, so I’m getting used to getting disappointed by strangely unrealistic portrayals of relationships.

Overall, this book surprised me quite a bit and I enjoyed the picture it painted of the supernatural world and how it interacts with the human world. In the future books, I’m hoping to see more consequences from Kitty openly admitting to being supernatural, and hopefully I get to see more of this world at work and how other packs/supernaturals interact with each other. We’ll see how quickly it’ll take me to get to book 2. :p

Originally posted on Going on to the Next. show less

Kitty is a werewolf with a late-night radio call-in talk show. The talk show is called "The Midnight Hour" and she answers questions, like a Dear Abby, for werewolves and vampires. She lives in Denver, and was turned maybe 3 years ago. She's the lowest in her pack, and content with that status.

But her radio show starts getting some traction, and she gets more attention than she really wants. And after a bit, she is outed as a werewolf. And then the police start talking to her about a series of wild dog attacks, or are they really grisly murders?

The plot keeps hopping, with uniquely lycanthropic problems to be faced, as well as real-world problems. There are good characters here, with well-set-up motivations. In the course of the book, show more Kitty grows up and changes. A satisfying, quick and interesting read. The major plot threads are tied up by the end of the book, but there are enough threads left to pull me to the next book. Recommended. show less

I hab a bad code, which makes it difficult to settle concentrate on any book at all right now, no matter how light. I’ve started at least four new books since this virus descended on me like a demon from hell last Saturday, and I’ve dipped into three or four that were already on the nightstand table, but nothing has fully captured my attention.

Until yesterday afternoon. That’s when Carrie Vaughn’s first novel, Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Warner, $6.99, 272 pages, November 1, 2005) landed in my mailbox. Despite my coughing and stuffy nose, it immediately intrigued me, even though I’m not a fan of Charlaine Harris and L.A. Banks, who write similar “woman dealing with vampires and werewolves” type tales. Maybe it’s the show more sexy blue, black and red cover showing a gorgeous dame with a snarling wolf. Maybe it’s because it comes with a playlist – songs Vaughn listened to while writing, and which certainly do set a mood. Maybe it’s because the premise is so cool: a closeted werewolf who hosts a midnight radio show for supernatural creatures and their groupies. Or maybe it’s because the prose flows so smoothly that I devoured the first 40 pages in no time flat

Unlike Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels, Kitty and the Midnight Hour isn’t done for laughs. It’s eerie, perfectly timed for Halloween. The descriptions of running with the pack, or the pack leader, being wolf while still being human, are skillfully handled and very dark. Kitty’s attempts to remain human, and to avoid vampires (who hate her show, and who are apparently in some sort of eternal war with the werewolves) are serious problems for which she seeks serious solutions. I understand from descriptions I’ve read that I’ll soon find myself in the midst of crime-fighting as well, always a joy to those who, like me, enjoy the mix of mystery with fantasy.

Laurell Hamilton seems to have started an enduring sub-genre lo, these many years ago, when Guilty Pleasures first appeared. She seems to have a worthy heir in Carrie Vaughn. And at $6.99, it’s worth taking the chance. show less

I thoroughly enjoyed settling back into nascent Kitty. In the later books she gets all tuff 'n' stuff and takes on the world, here she decides who and what she wants to be.

First, I love Kitty's sense of humor as much as the very real, well, weakness she experiences. That isn't the precise word I'm looking for; I mean the feeling of writhing worthlessness, of unimportance she feels in the face of Carl and Meg's alpha-ness. I mean the deep seated driving need to please those she perceives as able and willing to protect her. When I went through these books originally, I felt that Kitty was kind of an unbelievable character because of this weakness contrasting with all she accomplishes. I think I see her valid reactions to her experiences show more as a different kind of strength these days.

The novel interrogates symbols of everything from LBGTQ rights to rape and abusive relationships; in short, hitting home for the socially disenfranchised.

In the wake of the Dresden Files, chock full of white horses, damsel saving, and peripherally questioning accepted constructs of masculinity, Kitty is indeed a breath of fresh feminist air.

A late night radio DJ who happens upon a talk show idea by accident, Kitty discusses topics revolving around the supernatural and how it intersects with, shall we say, "straight" reality. What exactly are vampirism and lycanthropy? Magic? The government has a study coding them as diseases. How should afflicted individuals be held/housed within the prison system? Should they be incorporated into police forces? What about licensing government officals to hunt down "rogue" paranormals?

Any of this sound familiar? Because it is the same issues faced by LGBTQ people, Hispanics, African Americans, the Japanese before them, the Chinese before the Japanese, and the Irish before that. For all our big talk about the wonderous melting pot that is the USA, we always seem to find some demographic to declare as unnatural, subhuman, "other," and not-as-important-as-we,-the-majority.

Urban fantasy takes this reality and runs with it.

Kitty learns about standing up for herself, on top of tackling all these identity questions about what it means to be different in a society that fears those it perceives as "different." After all, standing up to bullies abusing their power to get money and sex looks a scary lot like the real world some days.

Protection that demands the sacrifice of self isn't protection; it is abuse. Kitty even recognizes that when she says that if the interaction with Carl were on a purely human level, she would be expected to leave because it is abuse. And that is the kicker, isn't it. There is always an excuse, always a reason why *this* situation isn't abuse, but gosh, if it were a slightly different context it would be. The paranormal element is Kitty's rationalization in the beginning of the novel. Vaughn really captures the inner turmoil surrounding the process of recognizing abusive power dynamics and the extraordinary, bone wrenching difficulty in transcending such situations.

I wish I'd found these books earlier in my life. As it was, Mercedes Thompson saw me through my bad spots. Kitty would have been a good role model for me; she still is. show less