Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn

Kitty Goes to Washington is the second book in Carrie Vaughn’s fun, supernatural series. This book follows our heroine, Kitty the Werewolf, (how cute is that name?) as she is ordered to appear before a Senate Committee and testify during a Senate investigation of “paranatural phenomena”. Along the way, Kitty meets up with vampires, both the evil sneaky kind and the sophisticated old world type, were-jaguars, were-bears and a creepy other worldly creature that’s sort of like the nastiest evil fairy/troll you could ever meet up with. Who woulda thought we would wind up feeling sorry for werewolves and vampires?

I think one of the things I love about these stories is that Kitty herself is darn human. She has the same fears, hopes and worries that everyone has, but with a really heightened sense of smell, and a bit of a fur problem once a month. I enjoy how the author takes the folklore surrounding supernatural creatures and manages to tweak it just to enough to give it an original edge, but not so much that it makes it irrelevant. For example, Vaughn keeps the “silver bullet equals death” theory, but allows her werewolves to choose to go “wolf” or be human, with the exception of full moon nights. Even then, she allows the wolves to be wolves, not some inhuman monsters that are out hunting just for the sake of killing. She alludes to the fact that there are werewolves who go completely wolf, and that they can be the scary monsters of childish nightmares. However her characters are such a good read because we can still identify with them. They control the monster within, and really, isn’t that what we hope everyone does?

I’m really enjoying the Kitty series, and I’d recommend them to anyone looking for a good satisfying book.

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