Kitty Rocks the House

Kitty Rocks the House (2013) Carrie Vaughn

Weirdly, this book was published in April, but it’s been sitting in The Pile, waiting for me to read it, and I just never got around to it.

Weird, because I usually thoroughly enjoy the Kitty books.

But after reading the last Jane True book, I decided I should try and clear some of these new releases off The Pile, so I grabbed Kitty Walks the House.

Now I’ve finished the book, I’m having as hard a time writing a review about it as I did getting around to read it.

Don’t get me wrong, this was NOT a bad book. But it did feel quite odd for a Kitty book. I was more than halfway through the book and wondering when the Big Bad was going to appear, or when was The Event that would be the center of this story going to happen. And I realized there wasn’t going to be a Big Bad, and there wasn’t going to be An Event.

In some ways, this felt more like several intertwined short stories rather than the Kitty novel I’m used to. Again, that’s not to say this was a bad story, but it kinda felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to do with itself. When most of the tension comes because Rick is refusing to return Kitty’s calls, it’s just… not what I was expecting.

Again, I’m making it sound like a bad story, and it wasn’t. I didn’t dislike one thing about this story, I just didn’t get particularly excited about anything.

I’m flipping through to the bits I marked, like this:

“As far as I know, no vampires live in Antarctica.”

“I’d have thought the long winter nights would be just the thing for you guys,” I said.

“Perhaps. But the food supply is a bit wanting.”

That’s actually a really interesting idea–how would a vampire manage in Antartica? But… it’s just a throw away line.

Or this:

“It makes perfect sense–immortal vampires are the best choice to travel the long distances between the stars. They’re the ones who would come to visit us here on earth.”

And again, this was just a throw-away line, part of her radio show.

The other things I marked were things that simply interested me, “(M)aster vampires gained power by creating and maintaining control over their progeny.” That’s an interesting idea. As is the Order of Saint Lazarus being an order of vampires.

Again, both of these were pretty much tossed out and then we moved on. Which I suppose is the problem I had with this book. There were lots and lots of interesting bits, but they never quite felt like they gelled into a cohesive whole.

But, it was still a pleasant escape for a few hours.
Rating: 6/10

Published by Tor

 
 

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