Mrissa and the Four a.m. Hour

[mrissa]

I woke up at 4:30 this morning, and instead of going back to sleep, I squinted repeatedly at the alarm clock, which was due to go off at 4:50. Blerg. But I haven't heard from markgritter that their flight was messed up in any way I could help with, so that part of the day went well. Also I took timprov to Perkins for breakfast. They don't have biscuits any more. We need to range a little further afield, because when you need biscuits, really nothing else will do, and as much as I am an enthusiastic baker, it is a bad idea for me to be baking before about 7:00 a.m.

Anyway, yesterday I read Carrie Vaughn's Kitty and the Midnight Hour from my World Fantasy freebie bag. I almost put it back on the trade table, because the back indicated that it was a book about werewolves and talk radio. And, in fact, it is a book about werewolves and talk radio. It...hmm. It was a quick, light read, and if you like Contemporary Light Horror, definitely give it a go. ("Light Horror": fantasy with traditional horror tropes. If it's got werewolves and vampires and you are not really supposed to be scared or horrified, I would call it Light Horror.) One of the things I really liked about it was that pack hierarchical behavior was not sanitized -- Vaughn recognized up front that if humans behaved like a wolf pack, it would be at best dysfunctional and in many cases abusive.

But. This was not a book that did really interesting new things with these tropes, nor did the characters grip me enough that I wanted to read about them regardless of what speculative conceit had joined them. In the end, this was firmly, squarely a werewolf book. I'm not actually keen on those categorically, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that none of the interesting plots were anything like resolved, I won't be buying Kitty Goes to Washington when it comes out. Kitty and the Midnight Hour was better than I thought it would be, and I'm glad I kept it, but it wasn't enough better than I thought it'd be to make me a big fan.

Comments

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read it too, and thought the same thing - nice, light read,enjoyable, but nothing to make me go "ooooh".

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Light Horror's not a bad name for it, though I tend to think of it as Urban Dark Fantasy. [ The various Vampire Chick Lit-alike names for the Anita/Buffy genre don't work for me, becasuse, well, Harry Dresden's not a girl and that series is the best of those I'm currently following in that genre by miles. ]