Review: Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand by Carrie Vaughn

Book 5 of the Kitty Norville series

Buy It Now: On Amazon.com

Description: HONEYMOON IN VEGAS?

Already the alpha pair of Denver’s werewolf pack, Kitty and Ben now plan to tie the knot human-style by eloping to Vegas. Kitty is looking forward to sipping fru-fru drinks by the pool and doing her popular radio show on live TV, but her hotel is stocked with werewolf-hating bounty hunters. Elsewhere on the Strip an old-school magician might be wielding the real thing; the vampire community is harboring a dark secret; and the irresistible star of a suspicious animal act is determined to seduce Kitty. Sin City has never been so wild, and this werewolf has never had to fight harder to save not only her wedding, but her very life. (from amazon.com)

The Fangirl’s Review: B+

I’ll have to start this review with a caveat. I haven’t read the first four Kitty Norville books. I’ve looked at them in the bookstore, but I never bought any of them, so I’m coming at Kitty and the Dead Man’s hand with no prior knowledge of the series. So, I’ve no idea about how this novel deals with the events of previous novels, except for the brief mentions contained within Kitty’s narration itself. I wish I had time to read the whole series, but the grad school reading is starting to pile up. I sneaked this book in last night and this morning.

(Also, I received an ARC of this book, and on the cover it says that it’s to be released in February of 2009. Imagine my surprise when I opened up Amazon and saw that it’s already available. Heh!)

Anyway. I enjoyed this book. I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it. It’s lighter than my usual urban fantasy fare, and I’m very pleased to report that I liked this book pretty well.

Kitty and her fiancé Ben find themselves in Vegas, initially so they can get married but the Vegas action keeps piling up. Kitty is doing a televised version of her radio show, and she gets roped into carrying a message from the vampire Master of Denver to the Master of Las Vegas. And unfortunately, their hotel is also hosting a gun show crawling with bounty hunters for the supernatural. The plot progresses quite quickly, with major things happening within the first half of the book. This, of course, led me to wonder what new and crazy things were going to happen before the end. Kitty ends up in the crossfire (figuratively and literally) between rival bounty hunters AND a mysterious magician and a strange troupe of maybe-lycanthrope performers.

There was a lot of plot crammed into 282 pages, and sometimes it did feel like things were being glossed over when they should have been fleshed out more. I wanted to know more about the bounty hunters with a hard-on for lycanthropes, but (in this book, at least) there is practically no information given about them other than that they’re Bad and they hate lycanthropes. The magician/animal show plot looks like it’s going to be dealt with in the next book, Kitty Raises Hell.

Kitty is a likable hero; she’s not so spunky that I want to reach through the page and slap her, but she’s got just enough foolish fire to get herself into the bad situations that drive the plot. I very much like how Vaughn writes Kitty as a werewolf. She responds to danger in a way that makes sense to me. It actually reminds me a bit of how Patricia Briggs writes Mercy Thompson; if Kitty senses danger, she has to force herself to stick with what she’s doing instead of giving into the animal instinct to get the hell out of there. It just seems more realistic to me.

I know this is probably more a shortcoming of mine, having not read the other books in this series, rather than Vaughn’s but Ben felt rather one-dimensional. I get that he’s clever, very sweet, and a very good guy, but I found myself wishing he was a bit more fleshed out. There are tantalizing hints of his past thrown out when they meet with some bounty hunters, but I wanted more. I suppose I should pick up the first four books, right?

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable, light read. And lucky for me, I have an ARC of Kitty Raises Hell, book 6, in my hot little hands. It’ll be released on February 24, 2009, so expect an advance review in the next couple of weeks!

Other Reviews:

• Monsters & Critics (positive)
• Darque Reviews (positive)
• Romantic Times (4 1/2 stars; must subscribe to read the review)
• SciFiGuy.ca (positive)
• Bitten By Books (5 tombstones)