2011 early July books: Vaughn

I've been busy with my company's annual conference where I didn't read anything beyond a newspaper. I did manage to read a book and some e-novellas before it started.

This is about an on-going series. It may well contain spoilers, but they should be mild. If you hate any kind of spoilers, you may not want to read it.

Kitty's Big Trouble is the latest book about Kitty Norville by Carrie Vaughn. This is a fun series. It recently changed publishers because Vaughn wanted to write non-Kitty books. That seems a bit short-sighted by the publisher when you've got a hit series on your hands. The series was snatched up by Tor.

Kitty is a night-time DJ who, on a whim, decides one night to start talking about supernatural issues. The show becomes a big hit, probably because Kitty herself is a werewolf. Earlier books found her breaking free of her first pack and setting up her own and were narrowly focused in her home town in Colorado. Later books have ranged across the country and are opening up into one of those widespread-vampire-led-conspiracies that show up a lot. Anyway, that's a minor note in an overall very good series.

In this book, Kitty, her husband, Ben, and his cousin, Cormac, head to San Francisco. Kitty is asked to and help the vampire Anastasia acquire a magical object before bad guy vampire Roman does so. Roman appears to be trying to take over as many vampires as he can (weres are fodder). I have to admit I don't really remember anything about Anastasia and Roman from the earlier books, which reduced some of the emotional impact. ("Oh, no, it's Roman!" Umm, okay) They are like popcorn. I should probably re-read the series sometime.

Cormac, former vampire/werewolf hunter, is now a convicted felon and on parole. As such, he's not allowed to carry a gun. He's making do with magical objects now that he's hosting a 19th century witch. Yeah, it's getting strange.

One thing that got me at the end is that Kitty plans to go to England. cormac makes a statement about whether he can even get a passport. Oh, probably, but England doesn't have to let him in, and likely won't. I wonder if Vaughn will cover that in the next book?

I still recommend this series. We have forward movement on plot and characters unlike some other urban fantasy series. Kitty is pushy and talkative but it's great having a character that would rather discuss a problem and try to find a solution or persuade someone to help first. I don't recomment this book as an intro to the series though. Start at the beginning with Kitty and the Midnight Hour.
 

2011 books: annual Mysterious Galaxy stop

When I go to my company's conference, I make a point of stopping at Mysterious Galaxy, a SF/F/Mystery/Horror bookstore in northern San Diego. To help make up for online competition (I believe), they get loads of signed books, have signings all the time, and happily make recommendations. I usually try to not buy a few books that I would normally get online or locally around the time of a planned visit. They also will give you $10 (on next visit) per $100 spent.

My haul this year was:

Ian McDonald, The Dervish House - I have an ebook of this in the Hugo voter packet but it's easier to read in dead tree edition
Steven Gould, 7th Sigma - I've been waiting for a new book from him for a while
K.J. Parker, Blue and Gold - a mysterious British writer, this is a novella or maybe a novelette
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes - space opera, pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck
Liz Williams, The Iron Khan - new entry in the Inspector Chen / Zhu
N.K. Jemisin, Broken Kingdoms - sort of sequel to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - a new copy to replace my thrashed (for me) copy
Megan Whalen Turner, Conspiracy of Kings - signed
Simon Pegg, Nerd Do Well - autobiography, signed, possibly a gift but it got damaged in transit. Rats.
Michael Robertson, The Baker Street Letters - offered when I asked for a British police procedural. It's not, but may be okay. What convinced me is that the client's father is a geological surveyor