Kitty Goes to War by Carrie Vaughn

In this nitty-gritty war story, Kitty’s gotta deal with a few werewolf soldiers dealing with PTSD and their violent wolf sides while facing down a new bad guy who seems to be able to control the weather.

Title:  Kitty Goes to War
Author:  Carrie Vaughn
Series: Kitty Norville, Book 08
Publish Date:  June 29th, 2010
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
Source: Purchased

Publisher’s Description: Kitty Norville, Alpha werewolf and host of The Midnight Hour, a radio call-in show, is contacted by a friend at the NIH’s Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. Three Army soldiers recently returned from the war in Afghanistan are being held at Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs. They’re killer werewolves-and post traumatic stress has left them unable to control their shape-shifting and unable to interact with people.

Kitty agrees to see them, hoping to help by bringing them into her pack. Meanwhile, Kitty gets sued for libel by CEO Harold Franklin after featuring Speedy Mart–his nationwide chain of 24-hour convenience stores with a reputation for attracting supernatural unpleasantness–on her show. Very bad weather is on the horizon.

Possible spoilers beyond this point.

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Kat Mandu says…

I like how it’s become a running gag that Kitty hates trouble but runs head first into it. I mean, trying to take on and coddle a small group of homicidal military guys? Even that seems a bit extreme, even for Kitty. But it’s Kitty. And even Cormac and Ben know she tends to get in over her head. But Kitty takes Tyler and Walters into her pack quite easily, forging a bond with them that’s very mom-ish. It shows a motherly side to Kitty that she won’t get to express later in her life.

I thought it was weird at the beginning when Kitty discovered the CSPB had lost the guys at first, only to find out that they were headed towards Kitty’s territory. I mean…why would you call Kitty away from her home turf, knowing the rest of her pack could be in danger? Right off the bat that seems kinda screwy but hey, Kitty’s used to people playing her.

Not that her luck gets any better.

Denver gets caught up in a snow storm caused by a magician who may or may not have been associated with notorious vampire Roman. Either way, he’s a wizard with a thunder-god flair capable of constructing massive storms. It even hints that he may have been responsible for Hurricane Katrina.

This had a lot of really cool action scenes. Lots of stuff to keep your heart pumping as you read. Kitty Goes To War isn’t my favorite book in the series but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I mean, it still gets a five, so hey.

Invested Ivana says…

I was pleasantly surprised with my reread of this book. At first, I couldn’t really remember much about this novel except for the werewolf soldiers. However, the story about the soldiers was much better than I remember, and this is the book that reveals the story of Speedy Mart and Cormac’s association with Amelia.

The relationship between supernaturals and the government has always been a touchy one in Vaughn’s world.  Actually, it’s a touchy relationship in most fantasy fiction that deals with the government at all.  As humans, we don’t appear to be very optimistic about how our government would deal with a new sentient species, especially one with more power than we have.  Says something about our general feelings toward our government, doesn’t it?

Anyway… this touchy relationship comes to the fore again as Kitty tries to deal with the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology and the military in the case of three soldiers who were turned werewolf while overseas in the military.  While nominally caring for the soldier’s rights as individuals, the military ultimately sees them as weapons; the Center ultimately sees them as research subjects; and only Kitty is fighting for their right to be seen as people.  She manages to save one of the soldiers, which is as good as she can hope for, given the circumstances.

While all this is going on, Kity also discovers that the owner of the Speedy Mart franchise is a weather witch who uses his many Speedy Mart locations as anchors for his storm magic.  Cormac, now with witch Amelia in his head, is able to make a plan to defeat the storm headed Kitty’s way so Kitty and her pack can take him down.  The cat that is Amelia is now out of the bag, and we’ll get to learn more about her in coming books.

Our reviews in this series…

• Kitty and the Midnight Hour
• Kitty Goes to Washington 
• Kitty Takes a Holiday
• Kitty and the Silver Bullet
• Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand
• Kitty Raises Hell
• Kitty’s House of Horrors

Other reviews…

• The Book Pushers
• The Good, the Bad, and The Unread
• Love Vampires

If you like this book…

…you might try Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series, Rachel Vincent’s Shifter series, or Eileen Wilks’s World of the Lupi series.