Audiobook Review – Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville, Book 10) by Carrie Vaughn (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Size: 352 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: July 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0765365668
Stand Alone or Series: 10th book in the Kitty Norville series
Source: Audiobook through Audible.com
Rating: 3/5 stars

This is the 10th book in the Kitty Norville series. I thought this book was a bit weaker than previous books, it was nice to see Kitty expand to the international stage…but she deal with the same issues as have been dealt with before. I really don’t have a ton to say about this book; it was okay.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was really well done. The narrator did an excellent job with distinguishing between voices and giving the characters a lot of emotion when they spoke.

Kitty and Ben travel to London to attend the first international paranormal conference. While there Kitty end up embroiled in local vamp/werewolf politics. The tension surrounding the 2000 yr old vampire Roman is rising and the long game is coming to a head.

There is nothing really all that surprising in this book. It mainly served to build up tension in the upcoming war between Roman and his enemies.

Kitty does many of things she has done in many recent books in the series; she gets in trouble and then proceeds to talk her way out of it. Neither her, nor Ben have a ton of character growth in this book and they were both kind of vanilla. Honestly I found both of them to be pretty boring.

Cormic is the interesting character in this book. We get glimpses into how he is coping with having Amelia sharing head space with him. Comric does change and grow a lot in the story, but he seems to do a lot of this off screen. I kind of wish we had gotten to follow his story a bit more. Although it is a bit creepy at times how he has a woman stuck in his head.

The plot mainly focused around Roman and the Long Game. There is a lot of posturing between vamp and were groups on either side. Lots of talking between groups and choosing sides. Again, it was pretty boring. I am getting a bit sick about hearing about the Long Game over and over but never really knowing what it is or really having much happen with it. I feel like it’s high past time to move on to something new.

Overall an okay addition to the series. The writing is solid but the characters and story felt a bit old and boring to me. I don’t know if I am just getting bored with Kitty or what. At this point I am on the fence about whether or not I will read the next book in this series. There are just so many excellent urban fantasy series out there; I would recommend the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, the Elemental Assassin series by Jennifer Estep, or the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews over this one if you are an urban fantasy fan.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Horror and Urban Fantasy Challenge
– 150+ Books Reading Challenge