Kitty's House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Werewolf talk radio meets reality television, what's not to love? Kitty finds herself roped into a reality tv show, thanks to some underhanded tactics by Hollywood producers. She and several characters from previous books, along with some new ones, are flown to a remote cabin in Montana. One of their cabin mates does not believe in the supernatural, so the war of truth vs. ego is on.
And then things take a horrifying turn. The reason I gave this 4 stars was because I found the bad guys a little too stock horror. This is no doubt intentional. Carrie's being meta with it, putting horror movie monsters into a horror movie themselves, where they are the ones stalked by creatures who are mysterious and scary. Like in a horror movie, the bad guys don't just blow up the house and have done with it, but rather tease and bait and trap and pursue. This kind of thing drives me nuts, but I get that that's how horror works. It's scarier when the baddies are insane and will want to make you suffer. I'm just a pedant on that score.
I'm not sure how I missed this one, as I know I bought it, but I must not have packed it when I moved and thus skipped it and gone on to read the next one. I'm certain I bought it because it's dedicated to Mike and Daniel, both of whom are friends of mine. Mike is author, Michael Bateman, who primarily does short stories and has been featured in a lot of top magazines, like Asimov's. Daniel is author, Daniel Abraham, who now does mostly novels under his own name and the pen names MLN Hanover and James SA Corey. Both of these guys, Carrie, and I have shared many a convention hotel room for the sake of cutting costs. Daniel and Mike both gave Carrie comments on this novel before it was published - Mike used to be in her writer's group.
It's been tremendous fun to watch Carrie's star rise. She and I got to know each other at conventions, and I knew her back when she'd just started selling her short stories. I still remember how funny it was to buy one of her novels from the dealers room of a convention. The bookseller told me in a very excited tone that if I came back a few hours later I could *meet* Carrie and maybe even get the book signed. I had to explain to him that Carrie and I were sharing a room, and for that matter, a bed. Given we were often the only women in the group, this was a common arrangement, and as authors, with insane career ups and downs, we'd always split the room bill, sometimes those of us with good finances would support those without, and thus we could have a home base with friends and as Carrie puts it in her dedication "comrades in arms".
This book is the seventh in the series. To begin the series, see Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville, Book 1).
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Speaking of Daniel Abraham, have you read Leviathan Wakes? I am thinking of buying it, as I find the premise fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI read most of it before it was published, and would highly recommend it. James SA Corey is actually two people, Daniel and Ty Franck. Before Ty cowrote with Daniel, he cowrote with me for several short stories, one of which we sold. (He and I were friends from when I lived in California, and he came out to visit me in New Mexico and then moved there a few months later.) He's disgustingly talented, as is Daniel. The premise for the novel was a role playing game that Ty wrote and many members of my writer's group played. Daniel was so impressed with it that he asked Ty if he'd be willing to do a novel. And now it's a series.
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