Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Kitty and the Midnight Hour (2005) Carrie Vaughn

Kitty Norville is a midnight DJ for a local Denver radio station (I believe it is supposed to be a public radio station. Yay!) who takes requests and calls. One night the calls go in an unexpected direction, and she ends up hosting a regular call in advice program from supernatural creatures. All the while, she struggles to deal with her own supernatural identity.

As I’ve said before, I’m fascinated by the way different authors handle the abilities of the supernatural creatures that inhabit their stories. Each other seems to incorporate different bits of folklore while making other parts superstition. Carrie Vaughn has created a supernatural world that someone parallels the rules of Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, although there are some significant differences. (I leave the discovery of these differences as an exercise to the reader.)

Kitty is a compelling heroine. She has her weaknesses, but despite the fact that she may not be completely content with her lot in life, she is doing the best she can with a situation not of her choosing. The secondary characters: Matt, TJ, and Rick, are also very interesting and quite obviously have both depth and back story, although we don’t necessarily learn what those back stories are.

The pack structure of the local werewolf clan was very interesting, in that the pack seems to retain a good part of its wolfish nature, although it isn’t clear whether this is true of all packs or just her pack.

As far as the writing, I was glad that it was obviously stated how much time was passing, because I didn’t get a good sense from the story of how quickly or slowly events were happening, so the written markers of time were very helpful. The dialog was also good, in that the characters seemed both real and realistic.

The only thing I took issue with was how ready the other supernatural creatures were to call “The Midnight Hour” and discuss their problems. If werewolves and vampires were really as closeted as they seemed in the story, then I wonder how willing they really would have been to call a radio program and discuss their issues on the air–first because their voices might have been recognized, and second, because caller id would give Kitty and the radio station their phone numbers and location. I found it surprising that so many would be willing to take such a risk.

But of course if they didn’t, there wouldn’t have been a book, so one has to assume that supernatural creatures are just on the cusp of coming out, and so such risks seemed justifiable.

This was a quick, but fun read (I read the whole book in about three hours–didn’t even stay up past my bedtime). Something light and distracting but thoroughly enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.
Rating: 7/10

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