Kitty in the Underworld Review

As much as I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Kitty Norville series, this one didn’t do nearly so much for me as previous books. It’s very hard to successfully capture a large amount of time passing with nothing happening, and to her credit Carrie Vaughn does it very well, but most of the book consists of Kitty being locked up in a cave and waiting. It’s well written, has some interesting takes on mythology and has a pretty cool cast of characters.

Trying to avoid spoilers but going to give warning here just to be safe.

That said about her cast, I had a hard time buying into their competence and intelligence. I get that it’s the nature of a cult to make you believe weird things, but the actions, deliberate withholding of explanations, it didn’t make sense. In fact, it felt like a plot device to hold interest and propel the story. I’m all for both of those things, but not when it feels obvious.

My second complaint is how Kitty ends up playing along, despite previous encounters with dangerous magic and knowing that these guys pretty much have no clue what they’re doing. The leader of the group is a guy she actually realizes is a man who’s literally failed at everything for his entire existence, and she still thinks that a team up is a good idea.

On the whole, it’s not the shining jewel of the Kitty Norville novels, in fact it’s definitely nowhere near the top of the heat. In Carrie Vaughn’s defense though, she’s set the bar pretty high with some of her previous works and it’s hard to meet those expectations every time. If you’re a big fan of Kitty and like lots of speculation about mythology, this one’s for you, but casual readers can probably get away with skipping this one and waiting for the next.