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Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville, #1)
by Carrie Vaughn (Goodreads Author)
by Carrie Vaughn (Goodreads Author)
Ceridwen's review
bookshelves: for-teh-ladies, urban-fantasy, mystery, stolen-from-richard, drunk-book-reviews, necrophilia, america-and-environs, baying-at-the-moon
Oct 03, 09
bookshelves: for-teh-ladies, urban-fantasy, mystery, stolen-from-richard, drunk-book-reviews, necrophilia, america-and-environs, baying-at-the-moon
Recommended to Ceridwen by:
Carrie Vaughn
Read in October, 2009
Okay. So I'm supposed to do a drunk book review of Dead Until Dark*, but now that I'm actually drunk, I find that I don't want to deal with Sookie Sackhouse and whatever she's about. I also find that I keep having to go back and clean up my crappy typing, but I guess that's the problem with the drunk book review. (I simply don't want to know how long it took me to clean up that last sentence.)
Anyway, I pretty thoroughly dug this book. I've been on this mission to understand what's up in paranormal chick lit for a while, starting with Twilight, moving into the Sookie books, and then finally with this Kitty book. Unlike the former two, I actually want to read more in this series, and I think it's because of one thing: sex. Twilight's all crazy-sexless, you know, except for the parts where we sigh and breathe about how lovely and alabaster and marble-hard Edward is, and the Sookie book is all full of sex that makes me feel like I'm in a 7th grade sex ed class with a full-on diagram of the female reproductive tract, and that doesn't feel that sexy either.
Oops, here comes the drunken digression. I think I might hate vampires. This may be my sister's fault, because she has described them as “high functioning zombies”, and this has gotten inside my brain, and every single time one of these paranormal chick-lit protagonists beds a vampire I think, “Ye gads, girl, you have just fucked a corpse,” which is terribly gross and wrong, but I can't tell if the gross and wrong is inside my brain, or inside the damn corpse who is also the masculine ideal. I mean, yikes. I like guys. I think they are neat in their guyness. I'm trying hard in my drunkenness to not make fun of them, but I guess I'm trying to say I like when guys are guys and not alabaster fucking corpses who are like 300 years older than the spunky chicks that they impressed with. (That sentence ended with a preposition. Moving along...)
Anyway. Kitty. What I liked about this story was that it was about a person who begins, in medias res, already having this werewolf thing, and that the werewolf thing was pretty well thought out. Werewolves are different from vampires in that they are not gross corpses, but divided people. They're like most of us, with our ids and superegos, only once a month their ids go all crazy and run all over the countryside baying at the moon and killing shit and rolling in super gross stuff like the collie I had once that rolled in a dead fish because her weird collie-brain told her that that was a good idea. You know? Kitty's part of a pack, and unlike people, the pack is based on all this weird dominance shit. (Ha ha, right? Anyone? Get it?)
So Kitty starts a call-in show about the paranormal, and then all hell breaks loose, and then she has to come to terms with the fucked up couple who are the alphas of her pack. As usual, I'm struggling to not be insanely confessional on a book-themed social networking site, but I've know couples in my day like the alphas in Kitty's pack, couples where the woman used sex and the man used cluelessness to get what they wanted, and Kitty's reaction of love and disgust seemed just about right.
Although, just to be a big reviewer bitch, I didn't like that the main character was named Kitty, even if the author joked several times about how it was a bad name for a werewolf. I dislike cutesy names, which may be one of the main reasons why I don't like chick-lit, even if it might be otherwise okay. I don't know, maybe it isn't okay. I find it hard to judge in my current state. Oh, and back to sex, there was very little in this book, and that made me happy, because I think dog-sex may be as bad as corpse-sex, and I'm not really interested in either. Yuck. I'm going to go drink some water and lie on the floor.
*I had to fix the bad italics, even though Richard's ragging on me to leave it as an example of how you really can slur while typing. what.ever.
Anyway, I pretty thoroughly dug this book. I've been on this mission to understand what's up in paranormal chick lit for a while, starting with Twilight, moving into the Sookie books, and then finally with this Kitty book. Unlike the former two, I actually want to read more in this series, and I think it's because of one thing: sex. Twilight's all crazy-sexless, you know, except for the parts where we sigh and breathe about how lovely and alabaster and marble-hard Edward is, and the Sookie book is all full of sex that makes me feel like I'm in a 7th grade sex ed class with a full-on diagram of the female reproductive tract, and that doesn't feel that sexy either.
Oops, here comes the drunken digression. I think I might hate vampires. This may be my sister's fault, because she has described them as “high functioning zombies”, and this has gotten inside my brain, and every single time one of these paranormal chick-lit protagonists beds a vampire I think, “Ye gads, girl, you have just fucked a corpse,” which is terribly gross and wrong, but I can't tell if the gross and wrong is inside my brain, or inside the damn corpse who is also the masculine ideal. I mean, yikes. I like guys. I think they are neat in their guyness. I'm trying hard in my drunkenness to not make fun of them, but I guess I'm trying to say I like when guys are guys and not alabaster fucking corpses who are like 300 years older than the spunky chicks that they impressed with. (That sentence ended with a preposition. Moving along...)
Anyway. Kitty. What I liked about this story was that it was about a person who begins, in medias res, already having this werewolf thing, and that the werewolf thing was pretty well thought out. Werewolves are different from vampires in that they are not gross corpses, but divided people. They're like most of us, with our ids and superegos, only once a month their ids go all crazy and run all over the countryside baying at the moon and killing shit and rolling in super gross stuff like the collie I had once that rolled in a dead fish because her weird collie-brain told her that that was a good idea. You know? Kitty's part of a pack, and unlike people, the pack is based on all this weird dominance shit. (Ha ha, right? Anyone? Get it?)
So Kitty starts a call-in show about the paranormal, and then all hell breaks loose, and then she has to come to terms with the fucked up couple who are the alphas of her pack. As usual, I'm struggling to not be insanely confessional on a book-themed social networking site, but I've know couples in my day like the alphas in Kitty's pack, couples where the woman used sex and the man used cluelessness to get what they wanted, and Kitty's reaction of love and disgust seemed just about right.
Although, just to be a big reviewer bitch, I didn't like that the main character was named Kitty, even if the author joked several times about how it was a bad name for a werewolf. I dislike cutesy names, which may be one of the main reasons why I don't like chick-lit, even if it might be otherwise okay. I don't know, maybe it isn't okay. I find it hard to judge in my current state. Oh, and back to sex, there was very little in this book, and that made me happy, because I think dog-sex may be as bad as corpse-sex, and I'm not really interested in either. Yuck. I'm going to go drink some water and lie on the floor.
*I had to fix the bad italics, even though Richard's ragging on me to leave it as an example of how you really can slur while typing. what.ever.
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Comments (showing 1-50 of 52) (52 new)
In the light of the sober morning, I'm wondering if our mutual id/superego warring analysis might be a bit off. Now I'm thinking that Vaughn is using the werewolf pack as a metaphor for human relationships writ large. It's not the werewolf part warring with the human part, the werewolf part is describing the interpersonal relationships the humans are having. Werewolf and human alike are social beings, comprised of id/ego/superego, but the werewolf part is much more overt in how that trichotomy is realized.That's right, I said trichotomy. Spell check agrees with me.
Ceridwen, if this is how you write when you're drunk then I am NOT doing a drunken book review for you! It's not fair! You're not supposed to sound this good or write this well or make me laugh about 300 year old fucking-corpses. I did think about it last night, though, I even started the Pride and Prejudice review that way, but I decided that I wasn't going to be able to live with myself if I failed at it.
PS - I think Richard is wrong, it's perfectly fine to fix tags in your review the day after, as long as you don't change content.
It is strangely coherent. I may have to try again when I'm drunker, but drunk typing is pretty hard. Also, I have a pretty healthy hangover right now, and I think if I were to get drunker than I was last night, I'd end up hurling and I hate that. I loved the P & P review, btw.
Are you sure you were drunk when you wrote this?It is a very good point about the corpses. I always wondered how certain biological function were performed. Quite frankly, could vampire really waste blood in a certain key way? (Yarbro says no, interesting enough).
The sex in the Sookie books was werid. I kept wondering how they got thier underwear off. Was it magic underwear or something? And socks; I now find myself, after watching too much Coupling, wondering about the Sock Gap (as well as the giggle loop, but that's a different story).
I actually had the thought last night that you probably wouldn't want to do the Sookie review once you were really drunk. Plans never sound good after alcohol. I think it's pretty suspicious that the drunk protester thinks he can set the rules for drunk reviews. I'm just saying. . . I don't think LOL Cat Richard would be so strict. Such an excellent description of the Sookie sex, C! So odd and un-sexy. I don't know if I want to read this book, though, after Richard compared it to Pump Up the Volume. I have such a large place in my heart for Christian Slater that my friends make fun of me about it, but unfortunately it does not extend to that movie. Yawn.
Anyway, get some Clearasil and a camera. I want to see this baby live-action!
I loved Pump Up the Volume. I think you had to be the right age at the time you saw it to really appreciate it.
So true. I only saw it a couple of years ago. I saw Sixteen Candles tragically late, too. And you and Ceridwen read Catcher in the Rye too late, yes? High school teachers should watch out for these things!
I read Catcher in the Rye at 13 and then at 16. I hated it twice. I was completely unable to relate to Caufield. I thought he was a whiney boy who didn't treat women well and deserved what he got. I understand I'm a bit abnormal in this. :-)
I really liked Pump Up the Volume, but I know that the teenage guys who saw it with me thought they were going to be pirate djs so that hot chicks would appear and doff their shirts and then they would actually see some real life boobies. Yes! I've seen it on tv since then, and once all the cussing is cut out, it doesn't seem as awesome - or I don't know, maybe I'm old. I'm totally with you, Elizabeth in the Holden Hating. I read it at maybe 17, in what was my worst English class ever, so that might have been the problem. Burn out + track suit = worst teacher ever. He seemed like this jerk I knew who spent most of my youth looking down on the rest of us because we were not rich like him. Then his dad lost all his money or went to jail or something, and he ended up in public school with the rest of us, and *still* spent all his time looking down on us. Grrr.
I hope the grant thing works out, Meredith. Does anyone know any actors who can perform skits for us? That would be rad.
This weekend on bookface has made me want to do both Catcher in the Rye and Pride & Prejudice reviews. *sigh* Work, work, work.My plan was that Derek Waters will just hire me as an underling to get all drunk the parts filmed and then he will provide the actors, since he seems to have some kind of closet full of them. But if other people have famous actors up their sleeve, that would be awesome, too.
Random convergences in this thread:My collie also liked to roll in dead things! Glad to know he wasn't just mentally disturbed.
I liked "Pump Up the Volume," too, although not as much as "Heathers." I saw them on TV, not in the theater, so I was probably in my early teens. I should try them again.
I loathed Catcher in the Rye. I hated many books in English class, some of which probably didn't deserve and were merely smeared with the tar of my obnoxious teachers, but I'm pretty sure wherever and whenever I read that one I would wanted to slap Holden Caulfield's smug little rich-boy face.
Oh, I think collies are all pretty mentally disturbed, but they're mentally disturbed in the same way, so it's normal. And, I can't vouch for this theory, because I've never read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, but I have a friend who holds that The Bell Jar is Catcher in the Rye for girls. But, you know, in a good way.
I haven't read the Bell Jar, either. The girls in my class all seemed to like Catcher, but maybe they were faking it for the grade. I was never very good at that, which is probably why my highest GPA was in the semester I did study abroad.
I hated Catcher and loved The Bell Jar, but it makes you want to jump off a cliff, if you can work up the energy to find a cliff, get there, and then jump. Holden whines at you. Plath made you feel like you were the one who was living these experiences. But maybe that's because I couldn't relate to Holden at all. Hm.
Aha! Maybe the idea has some merit then. I've never read The Bell Jar because of the whole cliff-jumping welter it's always given off.
I could see the comparison. I love both of those books, but I had the "living the experiences" feeling with both of them.
Ceridwen, it should be safe to read The Bell Jar as an adult, in the summer, outside, and some strong drinks on hand.
Good idea! We should both read it for, say, Cinco de Mayo. I make an excellent margarita and am famed for my creamy chicken and green chile enchiladas.
Ha! I'm still wearing snow pants for Cinco de Mayo, but I can catch up with you on the Fourth of July. And I'm holding you to the enchiladas and margaritas. You've been warned.
Hmm, very very interesting. I'm not a very weepy drunk though - I'm more interested in giggling and making emphatic pronouncements about very silly things - just like my normal self, only more so. Do you think it might take a weepy drunk to really do this justice? "Omg, so beautiful and so true," etc? I suppose I could just read it and find out.
I'd rather we got a silly and irreverent review of the book. I don't think I could deal with "so beautiful and so true" on this one.May I join in your group read, too?
Yes! Yes! I may get a drunken book review out of Elizabeth yet! I think I actually own this book, and will now put together the equipment to go caving in the disaster that is my book collection. Book avalanche to commence in T-minus 5, 4, 3...
Considering how today is going, Ceridwen, you may get drunken book review of The Eyre Affair tonight.
That would be a good one, I think. I'm excited about a drunken book review from you, but I'm sad you are having a bad day. And I've been giving pep-talks recently, so here's one for you: You are absolutely aces, Elizabeth! With your intelligence and wit, I'm sure you can overcome whatever annoying crap is currently getting you down. And I'm not blowing smoke or being snarky and cruel: you rock.
Hey, you don't know me, I'm just a random somebody who follows your reviews--hope you don't mind. It was your drunken review that got me to read the Kitty series--something I was determined to never do. Because, I'm entirely too superficial and I do judge books by their covers--and their titles--unfortunately. Anyway, had it not been for your drunken musings I'd never have picked up Kitty and the Midnight Hour, which would have been a shame since it's much better then a lot of the paranormal romance crap being sold these days. So yeah, thanks.
Oh, and you should really consider doing more drunken reviews since the ones you've posted are quite poignant, yet also incredibly amusing.
Thanks Penny! The covers - and titles - really are dreadful - so not my speed. My husband met Carrie Vaughn at some point - they had a long conversation about semicolons. I think this is just fantastic, so I read her book. The next one in the series is not nearly as good, and then I gave up, because I get tired of open-ended series. I *do* like that her stories aren't a bunch of bobble-headed stupidity about omg sparkly vampire boiz are so hawt. And phew! Doing a drunk book review every six months is about what I can muster. Gotta let the kidneys recover and take a nap. :)
Well, she's one of the Semicolon Club fo sho - although I think she was anti-semicolon use in her own writing. I think in Richard's somewhat more drunken-sounding review of this book, he talks about meeting her & discussing semicolons. I'll forgive her for being anti-semicolons - you know how much I love them - because having a position on semi-colons AT ALL is just the bees knees! It's possible Charlaine Harris has one, but I doubt it.
But what about the review (I forget what the book was) where he talked about meeting you and there was a concert, or something? I'm being so specific right now¡ Srsly, if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's your fault¡ I'll find it eventually.
Yes! Wow! You're obviously a genius. That's exactly what I was thinking of. Apparently, I'm wrong, though. I think it was actually in the thread about Eats Shoots and Leaves.
Wow. That thread is too long even to consider looking at these days - who knew booksters were so easy to rile up? Okay, no, we all knew it, but the amount of near-fist-fights seemed disproportionate to the topic at hand in the BEST WAY POSSIBLE.
Totally. We are all Buck's fabled witch doctors and crazies when it comes to punctuation. There's no way I'm looking through the thread, but I have a very vivid picture in my head of the semi-colon conversation Richard had with this woman. I'll turn it into a movie someday and we can all fight about mise en scene instead of quotation marks and comma placement.
Ooooh, more gr history?! Whose Eats Shoots and Leaves review? I wanna read it!edit: Nevermind, it's referenced in Richard's review - off to Ceridwen's shelves!
It was epic and, if I remember correctly, it was during my first week (maybe month) of law school. Horrible decisions I had to make about where to invest my time.
Great voice (in the book review). And ending sentences with prepositions is OK, too, so put a stake in that misconception once and for all.
And ending sentences with prepositions is OK, too, so put a stake in that misconception once and for all.No, totally, I agree. I always liked Churchill's* quip on the matter:
"Not ending a sentence with a preposition is a bit of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."
But if you want people to take you seriously in writing, sometimes you just have to play the game, which means following even the rules that you think are dumb/pointless. Although, I guess I wasn't trying to be taken seriously, because I was very drunk. I see now that I also split an infinitive in this review, which kills me a little bit, even though I know that's another one of those arbitrary ported-in-from-Latin rules.
*It probably wasn't Churchill who said this, but it is attributed to him.
I'm not sure about the criteria, but this site claims that among the most quoted famous people, Twain lands 15th, Churchill 25th, and the Wilde One, 34th. I doubt this list's accuracy, though I can't argue with #1: Unknown (a.k.a. "Anonymous"). Who could forget him (or her)?http://www.famousquotes.com/most-quoted/
That's a cool list, although I wish there were some explanation as to how it was arrived at. (There's a hanging preposition for you right there!)
awesome review girl, I enjoyed it and I'm pretty partial to werewolves myself, always good read with those fuzzies running around
haha love this review. I totally agree, i actually read a book that had a werewolf change from human to half wolf (you'll probs guess which half) while having sex with the main character. so wrong and totally going on my burn pile. im sick of so much sex that its on the verge of being porn and your sisters comment is golden lol keep up the drunken reviews!
See, she didn't close the italic tag after Dead Until Dark, and the entire review was italic. That, to me, is the point of drunk book reviews. Little tagging mistakes that prove you were, indeed, drunk. It's funny! But now that you've got some aspirin and a gallon of water, you see what you did last night, you're embarrassed, and now you're trying to burn the copy of the videotape before it hits the internets. Maybe Meredith was right, and video is the way to go.
Fail.