The fourth book in Carrie Vaughn’s series about the unlikely werewolf, Kitty Norville, brings the series full circle and Kitty back to where she began.  It gives one part of the story some closure while creating a new normal for the radio talk show host.

Still living in a sort of exile away from Denver due to issues with her original pack, Kitty has carved out a bit of a life with Ben, who’s also her lawyer and a fairly new werewolf.  Her show is as hot as ever, and although the two of them wrestle with feelings about Cormac’s incarceration, life, in general, has been good.

That is until Kitty gets a visit from an old friend.  Rick, a vampire, tells her things aren’t going so well in Denver.  He wants Kitty to come back and help him depose Carl and Meg, the leaders of the werewolf pack there, as well as Arturo, the head of the vampire family.  Kitty refuses. There are events in her past in Denver that keep her on the run, involving Carl and Meg.

Soon, however, a family crisis means Kitty needs to return to Denver.  There’s really not much of a choice for her.  She tries to duck into town unnoticed, but that’s not the way things go.  She finds herself in the middle of a battle.  Kitty would like nothing more than to stay out of it and attend to the business that brought her there, but there’s not much story in that.

Kitty and the Silver Bullet stays interesting bringing back characters that are familiar and giving them more depth.  It’s the first time we’re seeing many of them since the first book except on the periphery of Kitty’s life until now, or in filling in some of her back story.  At the same time, the story in this book moves along nicely, getting Kitty and Ben reluctantly in the middle of a power struggle in Denver.

Vaughn’s descriptions are great.  Even never having visited Denver, I had a feel for the urban setting with the battles going on.  It’s not hard to picture the different areas and settings the way she describes them.  Add in some colorful characters, both of the supernatural quality and human, and it kept my interest without going over the top.

As much angst as there is in Kitty and the Silver Bullet, it’s the first novel where it felt like Kitty was growing up and growing out of some of the whiny tones her other stories had.  At times it would seem like a “woe is me, why do these things happen to me, I just want to live a quiet life” type of thing.  I’d want to smack her upside the head and say “quit whining and deal with it.”  Many times she’s drawn into situations reluctantly, as she is here, but it seems like these events give her the strength she needs to be the strong person it always seemed like she had the potential to be.  Perhaps it’s also some of the very normal things she deals with here regarding learning a hard truth about the effect of being a werewolf on her own body and her own life as well as being back in the family fold that helps her grow into a more mature character.

Whatever it is, it works, and by the end of the book I liked Kitty a whole lot more, as well as looking forward to more stories in the series.  I’d thought this series was better than some on the subject but still wasn’t anything more than a guilty pleasure or light reading.  Kitty and the Silver Bullet seems to move the series, and the ongoing characters, into a bit of a different realm.

Previous book in the series (link): Kitty Takes a Holiday