Kitty is settled in Denver for the first time in a long
time, and there’s a lot of things she has to address. Not least of which is a
challenge for leadership of her pack which she has been neglecting with her
various battles against Roman. She has to re-build those bonds to see off the
challenger.
And then a vampire in town comes looking for Rick – and they sequester themselves behind magical shields, leaving Kitty to soldier on managing Denver, her family, her pack and the fight against Roman alone.
I’m tempted to say this book is a filler – and in many
ways it is. There’s little advancement of the meta plot despite a revelation at
the end. There’s little coherent central plot to be advanced. There’s a series
of random stuff happening, a lot of it isn’t resolved. We see Kitty with her
family, we see a couple of her radio shows that aren’t really linked to
anything, including a long, vaguely interesting debate between 2 academics and
an equally long ramble about a crystal skull.
It doesn’t really go anywhere, it doesn’t really develop anything, it doesn’t bring much in the way of new information, it doesn’t advance Kitty’s life at all. Really, we finish this book no further along than when we started it.
On that score I’d slap 2 fangs on this book, file it
under “meh” and move on.
And I’m still tempted to do that – it wasn’t fascinating or immense fun. It was fun and vaguely amusing, but certainly not more than that.
But, when looked at in the context of the entire series, it makes a bit more sense. Kitty has been letting things slide in the last few books. Not her battle against Roman, but her more at home issues. Her pack, her family, the city of Denver – she hasn’t been around, In fact, in the last 2 books (putting aside the short stories) she hasn’t even been in the city – she’s been in London and San Francisco. She has let things slide and she’s supposed to be an alpha werewolf, she’s supposed to have a job and she’s supposed to have a family including a mother who is just recovering from cancer and a sister stressed out about the whole thing.
