Book Review: Low Midnight by Carrie Vaughn (Kitty Norville #13)

Low Midnight spins out of the series on the wave of popularity surrounding Kitty's most popular supporting character, Cormac Bennett, a two-minded assassin of the paranormal who specializes in killing lycanthropes.

In his first solo adventure, Cormac, struggling with a foreign consciousness trapped inside him, investigates a century-old crime in a Colorado mining town which could be the key to translating a mysterious coded diary… a tome with secrets that could shatter Kitty's world and all who inhabit it.

With a framing sequence that features Kitty Norville herself, Low Midnight not only pushes the Kitty saga forward, but also illuminates Cormac's past and lays the groundwork for Kitty's future.

My Review: 
Kitty and her friends are awaiting answers on Amy's Book of Shadows which they have placed online to see if anyone can help them with it. Cormac and Amelia want to find Amy's aunt to see if she has a way of unlocking Amy's secrets so they can defeat Roman. Amelia wants to go because it is the same town where she was once arrested for murder. Judi becomes interested in Cormac and Amelia and sets them on a quest to prove they are worthy of her help before she decodes the book for them, which brings Cormac into contact with people from his past who are up to no good.

I'll be honest, Amelia is not a particular favourite of mine especially after her actions changed the balance of power in Denver. I feel she is forcing Cormac away from what he should be doing in favour of pandering to her more selfish pursuits. In London she wanted to track down her family and old house which in the grand scheme of things was less important than stopping Mercedes and her friends causing civil war at the conference and endangering Kitty and her friends. The reason she wants to go on this adventure is to explore her own past more than get answers to the Roman problem. I'm just not sold on the whole shared body thing between the two characters as I feel that it hampers Cormac as a character. If she had been a ghost that could leave the prison, teaching him all her magic it would've worked better for me. So having pretty much a solo adventure with the two just wasn't top of my list.

We explore a lot of Amelia's back story in this book, going to the scene of the murder that led to her arrest and death. The reader is shown the scene through Judi as a tour guide, with Amelia telling Cormac which of these details were wrong. Judi and Frida are intrigued and agree to help if Cormac and Amelia investigate the scene of a historical magic battle in the area to see if they can solve that old crime. This leads to our duo messing about solving an old murder case that is totally irrelevant to the final battle with Roman. We also go in to Cormac's old life including an ex girlfriend Mollie who still lives in the town and former friends that he really wants nothing to do with. He gets involved in a fued between these people and an enemy group. Again this is just not important to the main Roman story and I found it frustrating. 

The entire book is spent looking at the former lives of Amelia and Cormac. I just don't understand the point of exploring all this over an entire book, when it is the penultimate book in the series. Could we not have cut down the road trip to just have Cormac speak to Judy and persuade her to unlock the book and come back with what they needed, and mixed that in with Kitty gathering all her allies ready for the final battle? I really did find this book dull and pointless. I wanted to know what was going on back in Denver, not a trip down memory lane. The relevant parts to this quest could've been covered in half a book instead of padding it out into a whole adventure. I'd even have liked to see what Roman was doing, marching towards his enemies or something. 

I feel that these last two books were nothing more than fillers before the final battle. Perhaps if they had put Kitty's imprisonment from the last book and mixed it with the relevant parts of this book, it would have been more interesting than two long drawn out books that I wasn't greatly enjoying.

Read September 2018
2 stars.