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Katherine "Kitty" Katt #4
Alien Proliferation
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science Fiction (2012)Alien Super-Being Exterminator Kitty Katt is expecting her first baby. But the alien attacks are getting more dangerous, and now Kitty and her Alpha Centaurion husband, Jeff, have to find out who's behind the conspiracy to kill Kitty's secret agent mom and what caused Kitty's transformation into a superhuman-and they've got to do it all before the baby shower...
458 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 6, 2011
34 people are currently reading
1431 people want to read
About the author
Gini Koch
80 books910 followersGini Koch lives in Phoenix, Arizona and writes the bestselling fast, fresh and funny Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series for DAW Books, the Necropolis Enforcement Files series, and the Martian Alliance Chronicles series. Alien in the House, Book 7 in her long-running Alien series, won the RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award as the Best Futuristic Romance of 2013. Book 14, Alien Nation, won the Preditors and Editors Reader's Choice Award for Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novel of 2016. Alien Education releases May 2, 2017, and DAW Books has just contracted through Book 20 in the Alien series.
As G.J. Koch she writes the Alexander Outland series and she’s made the most of multiple personality disorder by writing under a variety of other pen names as well, including Anita Ensal, Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, and J.C. Koch.
In addition to her upcoming Alien Series releases, she has stories featured in a variety of anthologies available now and coming soon, writing as Gini Koch, Anita Ensal, J.C. Koch, and Jemma Chase. Writing as A.E. Stanton she will have an audiobook release in 2017, Natural Born Outlaws (The Legend of Belladonna Part 1) coming from Graphic Audio.
For full details on all releases, all the news about Gini's books, signings, events, excerpts, and more, visit her website: http://www.ginikoch.com.
As G.J. Koch she writes the Alexander Outland series and she’s made the most of multiple personality disorder by writing under a variety of other pen names as well, including Anita Ensal, Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, and J.C. Koch.
In addition to her upcoming Alien Series releases, she has stories featured in a variety of anthologies available now and coming soon, writing as Gini Koch, Anita Ensal, J.C. Koch, and Jemma Chase. Writing as A.E. Stanton she will have an audiobook release in 2017, Natural Born Outlaws (The Legend of Belladonna Part 1) coming from Graphic Audio.
For full details on all releases, all the news about Gini's books, signings, events, excerpts, and more, visit her website: http://www.ginikoch.com.
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February 29, 2012
This fourth instalment in the Kitty Katt series delivers just as much action as the previous books, proving that a newborn can't slow Kitty down. Fighting another grand mastermind design full of red herrings and unknown enemies, Kitty and her alien husband Jeff Martini are on hand to save the day.
To recap for those who aren't familiar with the series, Kitty inadvertently discovered that there are aliens on Earth - very sexy, drop-dead gorgeous aliens who came here from their own planet in the Alpha Centauri system to help protect us from "superbeings", parasitic aliens that latch onto people in the height of anger, turning them into destructive monsters. The sexy aliens - or "A-C"s as they're called - have a few special gifts to help them: double hearts mean that they can run faster than you can see and are stronger than humans and heal quickly; some are also born with talents, able to manipulate images (which is why no one sees the superbeings manifest, despite all the cameras on our phones) or feel people's emotions.
All sounds pretty grand, right? It is that, and I haven't even mentioned their fancy alien technology! (Honestly, if I didn't enjoy this series it'd be far too easy to take the piss out of it.) (And if I didn't enjoy it so much, I'd probably be really annoyed that the aliens are predominantly white, all attractive and so, well, human!) Kitty became Commander of the Airborne unit, with mostly humans in her team, and married the Commander of Field operations, Jeff Martini - who also happened to be a descendent of the royal family back on the home world. And then they got pregnant. That should bring you up to speed on the over-arching plot points without spoiling any of the actual plots of the previous books. I do try. ;)
Alien Proliferation begins with a heavily pregnant Kitty being bossed around by pretty much everyone else, but still determined to be an active Commander in the A-C community. Her longtime best friend and love interest rival, Charles "Chuckie" Reynolds, head of the CIA's ET division, is with her for a very fishy meeting with some head honchos, but before they can spend much time thinking about it Kitty goes into labour.
Now, here's where the series disappoints me. I'm not asking for a graphic, overly detailed description of childbirth, not at all. But Alien Proliferation has to contain the most unrealistic childbirth scene I've ever come across, aside from Rachel Green in Friends. Yes, I know, the comedy is more important than being accurate, but Kitty's labour and childbirth weren't comedic at all. In fact, I think it was meant to be quite heavy and serious. And I'm aware that no two women, or no two births, are going to be the same. And sure, she's having a half-alien baby that's pretty much all alien in nature, but physiologically that doesn't change anything.
To have this at the beginning of the book was like a big mountain of turd to tunnel through to get to the real story. "Disappointed" would be the nice word for it. Unfortunately, it was soon followed by what I can only call a surreal newborn experience for Kitty and Jeff. I love that Kitty "kicks ass" (I can't say that without quotation marks, sorry, it's just not an expression I ever use myself), she's resourceful and, as she puts it, can think like the megalomaniacs which is why she's usually the one who figures the mastermind plans out. But honestly? She's still human. She's got a newborn and even if the baby, Jamie, is right out of Fantasy land, I still wanted to see Kitty stressed, exhausted, frazzled, hormonal (especially considering the gazillion litres of breast milk she's able to pump out, geez!) and weepy - essentially, I wanted to be able to relate to her. Because here's an experience I've had too. I've never killed a superbeing, I've never met an alien (that I know of ;) ), I've never flown a plane or killed someone or any of the other things Kitty's done. I've certainly never worked in marketing, either. But I have had a baby. And to see Kitty be able to breastfeed perfectly from the first, to be able to have intelligent conversations with important people, to hear her keep saying things like how easy having a baby is, and so on - it started to really piss me off. Basically, it was just so entirely unrealistic that I found it hard to believe she'd even had a baby. Could not one thing have been difficult for her? If I hadn't read that Koch herself has a daughter, I'd have a hard time believing the author knew anything about labour, childbirth and newborns.
I also got distracted by the issue of contraceptives. Namely, that Jeff and Kitty don't use any. This seems so ... irresponsible, and what are the odds that they become pregnant pretty much around the time they get married? Kitty's a woman with a strong libido, and you're telling me she never stopped to worry about getting pregnant with "some alien guy" she was shagging (going back to the first book). And now they've had a baby, despite the hormones from breastfeeding that suppress your libido (so that you focus on the baby and don't have sex so you don't get pregnant again - seriously, the human body is quite clever), they're back in the sack again without any contraceptives! If you're thinking, well that's not an important detail and I don't really need to read about the characters stopping to put on a condom, that's a fair point, but there doesn't need to be a description of it, just a mention somewhere. (And you'd be surprised at how often contraceptives get mentioned in Romance fiction, which this series has a dose of.)
After the massive hump that was the childbirth scene, though, we get right back into a major mastermind plan, as per usual. I don't want to give you any details, but it lives up to the previous ones and even surpasses them. (Makes me wonder: can Koch keep this up? Can she come up with another mastermind plan even more devious and widespread than this one?) I especially liked that we got to know a few "foot soldiers", the usually nameless fodder that lose their lives and are quickly forgotten. Remember in Austen Powers, you got to know a few of them? Often in movies, you get lots of nameless, faceless men charging in and getting killed, and no one stops to wonder about these people, their names, their personalities, their families, their hopes and dreams. They're just "bad guys". Most action and spy movies have loads of these extras. Here, some of those nameless, faceless A-C good guy soldiers die, but we get to know a few names, know their family, and mourn them. I appreciated that.
The plot is actually a lot heavier and there's less room for comedy, though we still get Kitty's distinctive voice and often humorous take on things. Like all good comedy, her flippancy often serves to make a situation more serious, rather than less, so that we end up with a story that's quite horrific in its details. That said, looking back you realise that it was a bit lighter on the action than previous books. And at 458 pages, that's saying a lot. The focus is more on the characters and their personal growth, but since a lot of that disappointed me (see above), overall the novel wasn't as powerful as it could have been.
I'm still not a big fan of Chuckie - there's just something off about him, and I don't just mean his nickname. But I'm still really enjoying the series, I love the character growth, the highly detailed plots, the fleshed-out world building, the supporting cast, and despite Kitty's increasingly superwoman nature and my increasing feeling of alienation from her, she has a great way with banter, she's fierce and loyal and a strong protagonist and narrator. My favourite in the series is still Alien Tango , but while I know I got side-tracked on the whole childbirth-newborn issue here, I did still enjoy the story. Just not that chunk at the beginning.
To recap for those who aren't familiar with the series, Kitty inadvertently discovered that there are aliens on Earth - very sexy, drop-dead gorgeous aliens who came here from their own planet in the Alpha Centauri system to help protect us from "superbeings", parasitic aliens that latch onto people in the height of anger, turning them into destructive monsters. The sexy aliens - or "A-C"s as they're called - have a few special gifts to help them: double hearts mean that they can run faster than you can see and are stronger than humans and heal quickly; some are also born with talents, able to manipulate images (which is why no one sees the superbeings manifest, despite all the cameras on our phones) or feel people's emotions.
All sounds pretty grand, right? It is that, and I haven't even mentioned their fancy alien technology! (Honestly, if I didn't enjoy this series it'd be far too easy to take the piss out of it.) (And if I didn't enjoy it so much, I'd probably be really annoyed that the aliens are predominantly white, all attractive and so, well, human!) Kitty became Commander of the Airborne unit, with mostly humans in her team, and married the Commander of Field operations, Jeff Martini - who also happened to be a descendent of the royal family back on the home world. And then they got pregnant. That should bring you up to speed on the over-arching plot points without spoiling any of the actual plots of the previous books. I do try. ;)
Alien Proliferation begins with a heavily pregnant Kitty being bossed around by pretty much everyone else, but still determined to be an active Commander in the A-C community. Her longtime best friend and love interest rival, Charles "Chuckie" Reynolds, head of the CIA's ET division, is with her for a very fishy meeting with some head honchos, but before they can spend much time thinking about it Kitty goes into labour.
Now, here's where the series disappoints me. I'm not asking for a graphic, overly detailed description of childbirth, not at all. But Alien Proliferation has to contain the most unrealistic childbirth scene I've ever come across, aside from Rachel Green in Friends. Yes, I know, the comedy is more important than being accurate, but Kitty's labour and childbirth weren't comedic at all. In fact, I think it was meant to be quite heavy and serious. And I'm aware that no two women, or no two births, are going to be the same. And sure, she's having a half-alien baby that's pretty much all alien in nature, but physiologically that doesn't change anything.
To have this at the beginning of the book was like a big mountain of turd to tunnel through to get to the real story. "Disappointed" would be the nice word for it. Unfortunately, it was soon followed by what I can only call a surreal newborn experience for Kitty and Jeff. I love that Kitty "kicks ass" (I can't say that without quotation marks, sorry, it's just not an expression I ever use myself), she's resourceful and, as she puts it, can think like the megalomaniacs which is why she's usually the one who figures the mastermind plans out. But honestly? She's still human. She's got a newborn and even if the baby, Jamie, is right out of Fantasy land, I still wanted to see Kitty stressed, exhausted, frazzled, hormonal (especially considering the gazillion litres of breast milk she's able to pump out, geez!) and weepy - essentially, I wanted to be able to relate to her. Because here's an experience I've had too. I've never killed a superbeing, I've never met an alien (that I know of ;) ), I've never flown a plane or killed someone or any of the other things Kitty's done. I've certainly never worked in marketing, either. But I have had a baby. And to see Kitty be able to breastfeed perfectly from the first, to be able to have intelligent conversations with important people, to hear her keep saying things like how easy having a baby is, and so on - it started to really piss me off. Basically, it was just so entirely unrealistic that I found it hard to believe she'd even had a baby. Could not one thing have been difficult for her? If I hadn't read that Koch herself has a daughter, I'd have a hard time believing the author knew anything about labour, childbirth and newborns.
I also got distracted by the issue of contraceptives. Namely, that Jeff and Kitty don't use any. This seems so ... irresponsible, and what are the odds that they become pregnant pretty much around the time they get married? Kitty's a woman with a strong libido, and you're telling me she never stopped to worry about getting pregnant with "some alien guy" she was shagging (going back to the first book). And now they've had a baby, despite the hormones from breastfeeding that suppress your libido (so that you focus on the baby and don't have sex so you don't get pregnant again - seriously, the human body is quite clever), they're back in the sack again without any contraceptives! If you're thinking, well that's not an important detail and I don't really need to read about the characters stopping to put on a condom, that's a fair point, but there doesn't need to be a description of it, just a mention somewhere. (And you'd be surprised at how often contraceptives get mentioned in Romance fiction, which this series has a dose of.)
After the massive hump that was the childbirth scene, though, we get right back into a major mastermind plan, as per usual. I don't want to give you any details, but it lives up to the previous ones and even surpasses them. (Makes me wonder: can Koch keep this up? Can she come up with another mastermind plan even more devious and widespread than this one?) I especially liked that we got to know a few "foot soldiers", the usually nameless fodder that lose their lives and are quickly forgotten. Remember in Austen Powers, you got to know a few of them? Often in movies, you get lots of nameless, faceless men charging in and getting killed, and no one stops to wonder about these people, their names, their personalities, their families, their hopes and dreams. They're just "bad guys". Most action and spy movies have loads of these extras. Here, some of those nameless, faceless A-C good guy soldiers die, but we get to know a few names, know their family, and mourn them. I appreciated that.
The plot is actually a lot heavier and there's less room for comedy, though we still get Kitty's distinctive voice and often humorous take on things. Like all good comedy, her flippancy often serves to make a situation more serious, rather than less, so that we end up with a story that's quite horrific in its details. That said, looking back you realise that it was a bit lighter on the action than previous books. And at 458 pages, that's saying a lot. The focus is more on the characters and their personal growth, but since a lot of that disappointed me (see above), overall the novel wasn't as powerful as it could have been.
I'm still not a big fan of Chuckie - there's just something off about him, and I don't just mean his nickname. But I'm still really enjoying the series, I love the character growth, the highly detailed plots, the fleshed-out world building, the supporting cast, and despite Kitty's increasingly superwoman nature and my increasing feeling of alienation from her, she has a great way with banter, she's fierce and loyal and a strong protagonist and narrator. My favourite in the series is still Alien Tango , but while I know I got side-tracked on the whole childbirth-newborn issue here, I did still enjoy the story. Just not that chunk at the beginning.
November 16, 2011
Such much ridiculousness going on here, but I can't get enough of it.
Kitty is now known as Wolverine with Boobs and still lusts for Martini like a sailor on leave.
Total wackiness ensues.
Kitty is now known as Wolverine with Boobs and still lusts for Martini like a sailor on leave.
Total wackiness ensues.
June 13, 2018
Purée les choses évoluent ! (dans tous les sens du terme hihi) tout ça promet pour la suite !
Et bon si, à l'exception de Jeff/Kitty peut-être, j'ai du mal avec la formation des couples en eux-même (ça va beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup trop vite, ça sort un peu de nul part du coup, on a aucune alchimie entre les personnages en amont...), la partie suivante, "on est en couple", est franchement bien gérée. Apprendre à se faire confiance, décider des choses ensemble, former une famille... tout ça est très bien traité je trouve.
Et bon si, à l'exception de Jeff/Kitty peut-être, j'ai du mal avec la formation des couples en eux-même (ça va beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup trop vite, ça sort un peu de nul part du coup, on a aucune alchimie entre les personnages en amont...), la partie suivante, "on est en couple", est franchement bien gérée. Apprendre à se faire confiance, décider des choses ensemble, former une famille... tout ça est très bien traité je trouve.
December 18, 2011
The Kitty Katt series has reluctantly become one of my favorites. Though written in the style of a humorous urban fantasy, this series is sci-fi all the way (though thankfully, it's dispensed with most of the incomprehensible technical jargon after the first book). While I'm not really a sci-fi girl, it was actually the humor that turned me off initially. Kitty was too sarcastic, the A-C's were too unbelievable, and the plot elements were insanely over-the-top. Kitty and Martini were too instantly attracted to each other, and the sex was too gratuitous. It didn't work for me for nearly three-fourths of the book, but then all of a sudden it did. The end scene was crazy and goofy, Kitty managed to kick some ass, and I realized that I was trying too hard to fit this series into the typical mold that I had ascribed to it. For the second book, I decided to just go with the flow, and wound up falling in love with the characters and the humor. Kitty manages to land herself in some seriously strange situations, but I don't doubt her capability to get herself out of them. While she might have come across as a little too Mary Sue at first, as the series has progressed I've come to believe in her as a character, rock-and-roll obsession and all.
While I found the first two books to be solid entertainment, I loved the third. Alien in the Family delivered all of the action I'd come to expect from the previous books, but it added a layer of sentimentality that I wasn't expecting. The last fourth of the book takes place after the crisis has been averted, and I appreciated Koch's decision to simply stand back and let the characters take center stage at this pivotal time in their lives. If I'd loved Kitty's friends before, I adored them now. The revelations about Kitty and Reader's relationship were shocking yet lovely, and her interactions with Martini felt real despite their abrupt, lust-laden start.
To say that I was expecting a lot of Alien Proliferation would be putting it mildly. Sadly, though the book had over 450 pages with which to wow me, it couldn't meet the high standard set by its predecessor. Kitty and friends are great company as always, yet I felt that this one lacked the sense of urgency felt in previous installments. Perhaps that was a conscious decision on Koch's part, wanting to spotlight Kitty and Jeff's introduction into parenthood rather than amp up the steamy scenes and the action, yet while it was great to see the main characters so clearly content with their lives, I didn't really feel like Koch added anything new. All of the characters are still awesome (some perhaps more obviously so after this installment), yet the personal revelations seemed to rehash what we've already seen. Not being a mother myself, I didn't relate as much as I might have to Kitty's new maternal role, but that might also be because she doesn't seem to dwell on it too much herself. She complains constantly about her "torpedoes," thinks her baby is the best in the world (which is understandable), but that's really about it. I actually found little baby Martini to be a bit creepy myself; I won't explain why, since that would ruin some surprises for those who haven't yet read it, but suffice it to say, she gives Renesmee a run for her money (and for those who recognize that I just made a Breaking Dawn reference, please try to ignore it).
To be sure, there are some important plot developments in this book, the ramifications of which I'm sure we'll be seeing in upcoming installments. Overall, though, the plot never really captured me. Combined with a small grievance I had concerning the writing (namely, overuse of certain catch-phrases combined with truncated sentence fragments), this one didn't live up to my expectations.
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While I found the first two books to be solid entertainment, I loved the third. Alien in the Family delivered all of the action I'd come to expect from the previous books, but it added a layer of sentimentality that I wasn't expecting. The last fourth of the book takes place after the crisis has been averted, and I appreciated Koch's decision to simply stand back and let the characters take center stage at this pivotal time in their lives. If I'd loved Kitty's friends before, I adored them now. The revelations about Kitty and Reader's relationship were shocking yet lovely, and her interactions with Martini felt real despite their abrupt, lust-laden start.
To say that I was expecting a lot of Alien Proliferation would be putting it mildly. Sadly, though the book had over 450 pages with which to wow me, it couldn't meet the high standard set by its predecessor. Kitty and friends are great company as always, yet I felt that this one lacked the sense of urgency felt in previous installments. Perhaps that was a conscious decision on Koch's part, wanting to spotlight Kitty and Jeff's introduction into parenthood rather than amp up the steamy scenes and the action, yet while it was great to see the main characters so clearly content with their lives, I didn't really feel like Koch added anything new. All of the characters are still awesome (some perhaps more obviously so after this installment), yet the personal revelations seemed to rehash what we've already seen. Not being a mother myself, I didn't relate as much as I might have to Kitty's new maternal role, but that might also be because she doesn't seem to dwell on it too much herself. She complains constantly about her "torpedoes," thinks her baby is the best in the world (which is understandable), but that's really about it. I actually found little baby Martini to be a bit creepy myself; I won't explain why, since that would ruin some surprises for those who haven't yet read it, but suffice it to say, she gives Renesmee a run for her money (and for those who recognize that I just made a Breaking Dawn reference, please try to ignore it).
To be sure, there are some important plot developments in this book, the ramifications of which I'm sure we'll be seeing in upcoming installments. Overall, though, the plot never really captured me. Combined with a small grievance I had concerning the writing (namely, overuse of certain catch-phrases combined with truncated sentence fragments), this one didn't live up to my expectations.
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October 15, 2011
Following the events of ‘Alien in the Family’, Katherine “Kitty” Katt is now officially Mrs Jeff Katt-Martini, and enjoying wedded bliss to her Alpha alien honey. But hot on the heels of Jeff and Kitty’s nuptials was more joyful news of a baby on the way.
With baby and baby shower looming, Kitty is holed up on bed rest and hating every minute of it. Carrying an alien baby means Kitty’s breasts are turning to torpedoes and baby’s kicks are rocket-powered.
Kitty also hates having to take to bed while Jeff and his cousin, Christopher, go off on all the dangerous missions and shoot-up’s. It’s little consolation that in her bed-ridden state, Kitty has been meeting with her best friend, Chuckie, and discussing ways to improve the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division (headed by Chuckie himself).
But then a phone call in the middle of the night throws Kitty’s maternity leave into a tail-spin. . .
Her best friend from high school, Amy, is running around the Paris Métro, being chased by twenty thugs. Jeff and Christopher swoop in to rescue Kitty’s bestie – but Amy brings more trouble upon her safe return. Like hints of a mole in the A-C division, and rumours of an assassination-in-the-making for Chuckie and the head of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit (a.k.a: Kitty’s mum!).
Contractions are three minutes apart, there’s a spy in the team and alien agents are disappearing. As Kitty would say, Welcome to DEFCON Worse.
‘Alien Proliferation’ is the fourth book in Gini Koch’s astronomically cool ‘Katherine “Kitty”(-Martini) Katt’ series.
The new ‘Katherine “Kitty” Katt’ book is always a treat. My ARC (advanced reader copy) arrives in the mail and I turn into a jittering junkie until I can become safely ensconced in bed and get stuck into the latest blasting adventure of Kitty and Martini. ‘Alien Proliferation’ was a particularly hard book to wait for . . . ever since Daniel Dos Santos’s (drool-worthy) cover-art was revealed with a swaddled baby cradled in Jeff’s arms. The wait has been hard, but the pay-off is totally worth it.
I’ll start by answering the question burning in most fan’s minds . . . yes, baby is born. Daniel Dos Santos wasn’t just playing a mean trick on us, and Koch isn’t doing a three-seasons-long soap-opera maternity trick. Kitty is at the end of her pregnancy when the book opens, we read a labour to rival Bella’s in ‘Breaking Dawn’ and the rest of the book is all the bad guys and gun-toting drama we’ve come to love . . . plus baby!
Never fear though, motherhood hasn’t softened Kitty (much). She’s still as kick-ass as ever, but now she’s just kicking butt and taking names with a Snugli baby strapped to her! Jeff in daddy-mode is gorgeous and doubly Alpha; his goal in life now is to take care of his family, and beat the living daylights out of anything that tries to hurt his wife or baby. It’s super swoon-inducing to read Jeff be all sexy baby-daddy. And I love that Koch is doing what so many paranormal/fantasy writers are reluctant to do . . . build a family for her protagonist. Koch’s series was unique enough for having Jeff and Kitty get together early on in book one (pretty much from page three onwards, lol). Now we’re reading Kitty and Jeff’s evolving happily-ever-after, complete with bundle of joy. If ‘Proliferation’ is any indication, it will be really fascinating to read all the usual drama, explosions and conspiracies that Jeff and Kitty deal with, but now with baby in tow. Not to mention the implications of what has happened to Kitty's post-baby body (dun, dunnn, DUN!) Bring it on!
Christopher is a big focus in this book (I can hear his fan-girls squealing in the background. . . ) Poor Christopher is the ultimate lovelorn underdog. His first love, Lissa, died before she could properly choose him over Jeff. Then Christopher went and fell for Kitty, when she was firmly Jeff’s girl. In ‘Proliferation’ both Christopher and Kitty address the previous awkwardness of his romantic feelings for her – and it’s a cathartic discussion, for both of them. We needed this, especially after Chuckie came on the scene and sent Jeff’s jealous-streak into overdrive. Jeff’s he-man antics over Chuckie are still very much lingering, so it’s nice that at least one of Kity’s previous admirers can be put to bed (so to speak). It also helps that motherhood has given Kitty a new, somewhat clucky, perspective. She loves Christopher, and she wants him to be looked after and loved. Their scenes together are heart-meltingly sweet and long overdue;
I managed not to shriek. Good, good. I was calm, cool, and collected.
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Is this the part where I make that horrible laugh and turn evil and then try to kill everyone I love, right before you and Jeff kill me to save the world?” He was serious, and trying not to cry.
“Oh, honey, no.” I hugged him as best I could, stroked his hair, and kissed his forehead. “Having power is one thing. Using it unwisely is another. Honey, you’ve always been powerful. And all you and Jeff have done with that power is protect people and worlds, and you both could have taken over without even trying hard. Chuckie thinks you and Jeff were already genetic evolutionary steps.”
But the real big draw-card of ‘Proliferation’ for Christopher fans is the introduction of his very own honey . . . that’s right, Christopher gets his very own happily-ever-after and it’s sexy, sweet and smouldering! I refuse to give anything away about the who, what and where. But I will say that I look forward to reading Christopher and ____ being loved-up and cute in upcoming books!
Just when you think Gini Koch’s ‘Kitty Katt’ series can’t get any better – the explosions can’t be bigger, the stakes higher or the alien men hotter – she wallops readers with ‘Alien Proliferation’ . . . and you realize that Gini Koch has a lot more blockbuster fun up her sleeve. Bring on ‘Alien Diplomacy’, pronto!
With baby and baby shower looming, Kitty is holed up on bed rest and hating every minute of it. Carrying an alien baby means Kitty’s breasts are turning to torpedoes and baby’s kicks are rocket-powered.
Kitty also hates having to take to bed while Jeff and his cousin, Christopher, go off on all the dangerous missions and shoot-up’s. It’s little consolation that in her bed-ridden state, Kitty has been meeting with her best friend, Chuckie, and discussing ways to improve the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division (headed by Chuckie himself).
But then a phone call in the middle of the night throws Kitty’s maternity leave into a tail-spin. . .
Her best friend from high school, Amy, is running around the Paris Métro, being chased by twenty thugs. Jeff and Christopher swoop in to rescue Kitty’s bestie – but Amy brings more trouble upon her safe return. Like hints of a mole in the A-C division, and rumours of an assassination-in-the-making for Chuckie and the head of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit (a.k.a: Kitty’s mum!).
Contractions are three minutes apart, there’s a spy in the team and alien agents are disappearing. As Kitty would say, Welcome to DEFCON Worse.
‘Alien Proliferation’ is the fourth book in Gini Koch’s astronomically cool ‘Katherine “Kitty”(-Martini) Katt’ series.
The new ‘Katherine “Kitty” Katt’ book is always a treat. My ARC (advanced reader copy) arrives in the mail and I turn into a jittering junkie until I can become safely ensconced in bed and get stuck into the latest blasting adventure of Kitty and Martini. ‘Alien Proliferation’ was a particularly hard book to wait for . . . ever since Daniel Dos Santos’s (drool-worthy) cover-art was revealed with a swaddled baby cradled in Jeff’s arms. The wait has been hard, but the pay-off is totally worth it.
I’ll start by answering the question burning in most fan’s minds . . . yes, baby is born. Daniel Dos Santos wasn’t just playing a mean trick on us, and Koch isn’t doing a three-seasons-long soap-opera maternity trick. Kitty is at the end of her pregnancy when the book opens, we read a labour to rival Bella’s in ‘Breaking Dawn’ and the rest of the book is all the bad guys and gun-toting drama we’ve come to love . . . plus baby!
Never fear though, motherhood hasn’t softened Kitty (much). She’s still as kick-ass as ever, but now she’s just kicking butt and taking names with a Snugli baby strapped to her! Jeff in daddy-mode is gorgeous and doubly Alpha; his goal in life now is to take care of his family, and beat the living daylights out of anything that tries to hurt his wife or baby. It’s super swoon-inducing to read Jeff be all sexy baby-daddy. And I love that Koch is doing what so many paranormal/fantasy writers are reluctant to do . . . build a family for her protagonist. Koch’s series was unique enough for having Jeff and Kitty get together early on in book one (pretty much from page three onwards, lol). Now we’re reading Kitty and Jeff’s evolving happily-ever-after, complete with bundle of joy. If ‘Proliferation’ is any indication, it will be really fascinating to read all the usual drama, explosions and conspiracies that Jeff and Kitty deal with, but now with baby in tow. Not to mention the implications of what has happened to Kitty's post-baby body (dun, dunnn, DUN!) Bring it on!
Christopher is a big focus in this book (I can hear his fan-girls squealing in the background. . . ) Poor Christopher is the ultimate lovelorn underdog. His first love, Lissa, died before she could properly choose him over Jeff. Then Christopher went and fell for Kitty, when she was firmly Jeff’s girl. In ‘Proliferation’ both Christopher and Kitty address the previous awkwardness of his romantic feelings for her – and it’s a cathartic discussion, for both of them. We needed this, especially after Chuckie came on the scene and sent Jeff’s jealous-streak into overdrive. Jeff’s he-man antics over Chuckie are still very much lingering, so it’s nice that at least one of Kity’s previous admirers can be put to bed (so to speak). It also helps that motherhood has given Kitty a new, somewhat clucky, perspective. She loves Christopher, and she wants him to be looked after and loved. Their scenes together are heart-meltingly sweet and long overdue;
I managed not to shriek. Good, good. I was calm, cool, and collected.
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Is this the part where I make that horrible laugh and turn evil and then try to kill everyone I love, right before you and Jeff kill me to save the world?” He was serious, and trying not to cry.
“Oh, honey, no.” I hugged him as best I could, stroked his hair, and kissed his forehead. “Having power is one thing. Using it unwisely is another. Honey, you’ve always been powerful. And all you and Jeff have done with that power is protect people and worlds, and you both could have taken over without even trying hard. Chuckie thinks you and Jeff were already genetic evolutionary steps.”
But the real big draw-card of ‘Proliferation’ for Christopher fans is the introduction of his very own honey . . . that’s right, Christopher gets his very own happily-ever-after and it’s sexy, sweet and smouldering! I refuse to give anything away about the who, what and where. But I will say that I look forward to reading Christopher and ____ being loved-up and cute in upcoming books!
Just when you think Gini Koch’s ‘Kitty Katt’ series can’t get any better – the explosions can’t be bigger, the stakes higher or the alien men hotter – she wallops readers with ‘Alien Proliferation’ . . . and you realize that Gini Koch has a lot more blockbuster fun up her sleeve. Bring on ‘Alien Diplomacy’, pronto!
November 20, 2011
Powerful Permutation
* Won this ARC from a contest that the author had
5 out of 5 gnomes
Loved this book so much. There was so much happening this time around and a lot at stake.
It's great to feel so many emotions about every single character, it's intriguing how every little character can be important in some way and really make you care about them.
I don't think I've ever read a series that makes me actually laugh out loud so much while reading, this can be embarrassing if it happens at work but well worth it reading wise. This story just grabs you and won't let go, I won't even tell you how many times I was almost late clocking in this last week because I was reading in my car.
There's about to be a Baby Boom with all the couples that are now allowed to get married and have kids. This promises to be an interesting ongoing development especially since some of these children are going to be very powerful. So who knows maybe someday there'll be some kind of spin-off called Alien: The Next Generation.
The new additions to the team continue to be awesome, Tito the ex-cage fighter is a great character and doctor. This time around we're also introduced to more of Kitty's friends who are almost as interesting as she is. I also continue to be amused by ACE and everything he can do.
Oh man, Christopher's problems in this book will break your heart but in the end you'll be cheering for him. He has a whole lot going on in this book. His future is looking so interesting and I can't wait to see what happens next.
Politics continue to be a problem for everyone and there are many plans all happening at once. It's hard to know who to trust because this time around a mole is thrown into the mix. It's not easy figuring out who this mole is either. That's not the only mystery either, let's just say that a certain part of this book made me even more scared of basements.
There's a delightful amount of chaos in this book and some tremendous changes for Kitty and everyone else around her. Having a baby is only the beginning of the craziness, there are some side effects that could make for quite the intriguing future for the series.
This book is full of action of many kinds :) Everyone is in peril this time and it takes many feats and derring-do to make things right. The ending is so so fitting and gave me an oh duh kind of moment when I realized that the next book in the series is called Alien Diplomacy.
This series continues to be one of my favorites and is always a must buy. These characters continue to grow and change in exciting ways and I know that I'm always eager to read what happens next.
* Won this ARC from a contest that the author had
5 out of 5 gnomes
Loved this book so much. There was so much happening this time around and a lot at stake.
It's great to feel so many emotions about every single character, it's intriguing how every little character can be important in some way and really make you care about them.
I don't think I've ever read a series that makes me actually laugh out loud so much while reading, this can be embarrassing if it happens at work but well worth it reading wise. This story just grabs you and won't let go, I won't even tell you how many times I was almost late clocking in this last week because I was reading in my car.
There's about to be a Baby Boom with all the couples that are now allowed to get married and have kids. This promises to be an interesting ongoing development especially since some of these children are going to be very powerful. So who knows maybe someday there'll be some kind of spin-off called Alien: The Next Generation.
The new additions to the team continue to be awesome, Tito the ex-cage fighter is a great character and doctor. This time around we're also introduced to more of Kitty's friends who are almost as interesting as she is. I also continue to be amused by ACE and everything he can do.
Oh man, Christopher's problems in this book will break your heart but in the end you'll be cheering for him. He has a whole lot going on in this book. His future is looking so interesting and I can't wait to see what happens next.
Politics continue to be a problem for everyone and there are many plans all happening at once. It's hard to know who to trust because this time around a mole is thrown into the mix. It's not easy figuring out who this mole is either. That's not the only mystery either, let's just say that a certain part of this book made me even more scared of basements.
There's a delightful amount of chaos in this book and some tremendous changes for Kitty and everyone else around her. Having a baby is only the beginning of the craziness, there are some side effects that could make for quite the intriguing future for the series.
This book is full of action of many kinds :) Everyone is in peril this time and it takes many feats and derring-do to make things right. The ending is so so fitting and gave me an oh duh kind of moment when I realized that the next book in the series is called Alien Diplomacy.
This series continues to be one of my favorites and is always a must buy. These characters continue to grow and change in exciting ways and I know that I'm always eager to read what happens next.
October 20, 2015
Dieses Buch beginnt für Kitty nicht ganz so rasant, wie der Leser es gewohnt ist. Das ist natürlich auch besser so, denn schließlich ist sie schwanger. Trotzdem fand ich es etwas schade, dass sie sich auf Grund des Kindes zurückhalten musste. Es war natürlich eine logische Sache, aber ich war zu dem Zeitpunkt ein wenig pessimistisch, ob es eine gute Idee war, so früh in der Reihe bereits ein Kind für Jeff und Kitty in die Handlung hineinzubringen.
Es dauerte aber gar nicht allzu lange und Koch hat sich einen Plot Twist überlegt, der neuen Schwung brachte. Und danach ist Kitty dann wieder mittendrin: erst deckt sie quasi vom Sofa aus eine neue Intrige und Verschwörung auf und bald darauf erleben wir sie auch endlich wieder in Aktion. Koch hält die Spannung dann wie immer gekonnt: jedes Mal, wenn ich mir einbildete, kapiert zu haben, was hinter der neuesten Bedrohung steckt, kommt Kitty mit einem neuen Detail um die Ecke und das Rätsel raten geht von vorne los. Und trotzdem macht das Ganze auch hier am Ende wieder einen Sinn (auch wenn man wirklich mitschreiben müsste, um zu überprüfen, ob wirklich alles logisch stringent ist!).
Neben der aktuellen weltumfassenden Krise steht auch die (Weiter-)Entwicklung der Charaktere nie still. Auch in Alien Proliferation verändert sich wieder einiges und am Schluss ergibt sich eine ganz neue Situation für Kitty und ihr Team, die frischen Wind für den nächsten Band Alien Diplomacy bringen wird.
Der Humor ist wie eh und je ein tragender Pfeiler des Buches. Kitty kann ihre große Klappe nicht halten und Reader, Christopher, Gower & Co. sind mit neunmalklugen Sprüchen und sarkastischen Bemerkungen immer zur Stelle.
Diese Reihe schafft es immer wieder, mich zu überraschen und zu unterhalten!
Es dauerte aber gar nicht allzu lange und Koch hat sich einen Plot Twist überlegt, der neuen Schwung brachte. Und danach ist Kitty dann wieder mittendrin: erst deckt sie quasi vom Sofa aus eine neue Intrige und Verschwörung auf und bald darauf erleben wir sie auch endlich wieder in Aktion. Koch hält die Spannung dann wie immer gekonnt: jedes Mal, wenn ich mir einbildete, kapiert zu haben, was hinter der neuesten Bedrohung steckt, kommt Kitty mit einem neuen Detail um die Ecke und das Rätsel raten geht von vorne los. Und trotzdem macht das Ganze auch hier am Ende wieder einen Sinn (auch wenn man wirklich mitschreiben müsste, um zu überprüfen, ob wirklich alles logisch stringent ist!).
Neben der aktuellen weltumfassenden Krise steht auch die (Weiter-)Entwicklung der Charaktere nie still. Auch in Alien Proliferation verändert sich wieder einiges und am Schluss ergibt sich eine ganz neue Situation für Kitty und ihr Team, die frischen Wind für den nächsten Band Alien Diplomacy bringen wird.
Der Humor ist wie eh und je ein tragender Pfeiler des Buches. Kitty kann ihre große Klappe nicht halten und Reader, Christopher, Gower & Co. sind mit neunmalklugen Sprüchen und sarkastischen Bemerkungen immer zur Stelle.
Diese Reihe schafft es immer wieder, mich zu überraschen und zu unterhalten!
November 13, 2011
Previously Published on my blog: Welcome to Larissa's Bookish Life
*Contains MINOR SPOILERS for the previous books in the series.
There is doubting it, Gini Koch can write the heck out of a book. Funny one-liners, incredible action and let’s not forget the amazingly compeling and lovable characters. The Katherine “Kitty” Katt series is right up there amongst my favorite series ever, if not at the top and am not surprised at all that Gini has done it again with Alien Proliferation.
Alien Proliferation gives us Kitty and Jeff Martini dealing with Kitty’s pregnancy, the limitations it has given her and more baddies for them to fight.
Kitty is just as awesome as ever as a new wife, prgnant woman and then mother, I think even more awesome, maybe SUPER awesome? You’ll understand it when you read it =)
I love where Gini is taking these characters. I am so happy we got that whole, will-they-wont-they out of the way so soon and that now we can focus on these building a family and having incredible adventures.
I know resolving that so soon might be tricky, but Gini has done is superbly and Alien Proliferation is the proof of that.
Oh and for you Christopher fans out there, our boy finally gets his HEA! YAY! I loved it and can’t wait for some double dates with Kitty and Martini LOL.
Alien Proliferation is another FANTASTIC addition to this universally awesome series that just keeps getting better and a must reader for any member of the Alien collective. If you haven’t read it yet, shame on you! You have NO idea what you’re missing!
*Contains MINOR SPOILERS for the previous books in the series.
There is doubting it, Gini Koch can write the heck out of a book. Funny one-liners, incredible action and let’s not forget the amazingly compeling and lovable characters. The Katherine “Kitty” Katt series is right up there amongst my favorite series ever, if not at the top and am not surprised at all that Gini has done it again with Alien Proliferation.
Alien Proliferation gives us Kitty and Jeff Martini dealing with Kitty’s pregnancy, the limitations it has given her and more baddies for them to fight.
Kitty is just as awesome as ever as a new wife, prgnant woman and then mother, I think even more awesome, maybe SUPER awesome? You’ll understand it when you read it =)
I love where Gini is taking these characters. I am so happy we got that whole, will-they-wont-they out of the way so soon and that now we can focus on these building a family and having incredible adventures.
I know resolving that so soon might be tricky, but Gini has done is superbly and Alien Proliferation is the proof of that.
Oh and for you Christopher fans out there, our boy finally gets his HEA! YAY! I loved it and can’t wait for some double dates with Kitty and Martini LOL.
Alien Proliferation is another FANTASTIC addition to this universally awesome series that just keeps getting better and a must reader for any member of the Alien collective. If you haven’t read it yet, shame on you! You have NO idea what you’re missing!
May 8, 2015
These books are insane. I think Gini took everything she liked, mixed it together, went a bit crazy, wrote it down and made a freaking marvelous books. I think all authors should just run with it like she does. But then I am sure if someone else did it, I would think "come one, please", but here, here it works.
What to say then, I am a bit lost for words. Ok, I will try to put my mind back together. Kitty is awesome as always, I really need her as my bff. She kicks ass and saves the day. Martini, her hubby, is to die for. I really need a Martini for my own. Even his jealousy is adorable. Together they are meant to be. A true power couple, and one that gets a baby in this book.
The rest, well I love Christoper, I still do not like Chuck *shifty eyes* (trying to steal Jeff's woman!), the poofs are wonderful, I really liked the pontifax in this one, James is great, ACE is cool, and you know the rest. You have to love these people.
The action is nonstop, from her giving birth, to trying to understand who is behind it all. There is a big conspiracy underfoot, and just when you think it is solved you see that there is lots of pages left, aha, more things to come. It's not as easy as it looks.
In the end what more can I say than that it's a series that I recommend. It even had me dreaming about aliens :)
What to say then, I am a bit lost for words. Ok, I will try to put my mind back together. Kitty is awesome as always, I really need her as my bff. She kicks ass and saves the day. Martini, her hubby, is to die for. I really need a Martini for my own. Even his jealousy is adorable. Together they are meant to be. A true power couple, and one that gets a baby in this book.
The rest, well I love Christoper, I still do not like Chuck *shifty eyes* (trying to steal Jeff's woman!), the poofs are wonderful, I really liked the pontifax in this one, James is great, ACE is cool, and you know the rest. You have to love these people.
The action is nonstop, from her giving birth, to trying to understand who is behind it all. There is a big conspiracy underfoot, and just when you think it is solved you see that there is lots of pages left, aha, more things to come. It's not as easy as it looks.
In the end what more can I say than that it's a series that I recommend. It even had me dreaming about aliens :)
February 7, 2018
Baby! I have to say this though and my experience with motherhood is coloring my judgement here, but labour and delivery were crazy easy according to this book. Also Kitty has about zero adjustment period to figuring out what to do with a new baby. BF goes great. And this goes for the next book too. Somehow J is always ok and Kitty goes back to pre-baby weight within hours and has no hormone crash (which everyone gets). Unrealistic and it made this book and probably the next hard to relate to.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 23, 2012
*Rating* 3.0
*Genre* Science Fiction/Romance
*Review*
*Rating* 3.5
*Genre* Science Fiction/Romance
Alien Proliferation is the fourth novel in the Katherine “Kitty” Katt-Martini series by Gini Koch. I added the Martini to the end of Kitty’s name since she is now happily married to Alpha Centaurion Commander Jeffrey Martini and expecting their first child as the story unfolds.
Kitty goes by several other names as well like Kitty Katt-Martini, Commander Martini of the Airborne Division, as well as Missus Martini. I honestly was waiting for someone to call her Mama Katz! Hey, I’m a child of the 60’s what can I say! Besides, the name could also be used by her mother Angela Katt.
Kitty is nearing the end of her pregnancy and she’s not exactly thrilled to be desk bound by her husband who fears that someone will attempt to harm her and take the baby away from them. Jeffrey, being an empath, pretty much weighs on her hand and foot and guesses her every need.Definitely a huge plus in my book.
The Alpha Centaurions are worried that Kitty’s baby may be fundamentally changed in an unknown way because Jeff was exposed to a Surcenthuman drug during Operation Drug Addict that nearly tore the couple apart.
(You need to read the series from the start to understand that Kitty comes up with all sorts of strange names for operations against aliens and humans who work with them.)
On another front, it seems that everyone that Kitty holds near and dear, be friends or family, have been targeted by an unknown agent of discourse for elimination or capture. This includes threats against her mother Angela who is in charge of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit, and her best friend Charles Reynolds who is in charge of the CIA’s Extraterrestrial Division.
*Thoughts*
I still find humor and appeal when it comes to Kitty and her adventures. Her snarky and sarcastic character still has the ability to turn on a dime and figure out things before anyone else, including her conspiracy latent friend Charles Reynolds. It's nice adding the role as new mother to her arsenal as well.
I may be in the minority here on my review but that is fine. I really thought this book could have been condensed into less than 400 pages. There was too much other stuff going on that could have been removed from the story. I also thought it might have been one of the weaker books in the series thus far yet also one of the more interesting in that we see how Kitty and Jeff grow into being parents for the first time.
This book also appears to be a bridge to yet another story arc now that Kitty is superhuman and has the abilities of an A-C. How the little girl will eventually play into this series is yet to be seen. I for one, absolutely love the name of Kitty and Jeff's daughter. Being this is a science fiction series, of sorts, I could even see a spin-off series in the not too distant future starring her.
I really felt for Christopher at one point in this book. Thankfully, in the end, it appears that everything will work out fine for him and YES, he even finds love with someone other than Kitty which shocked even me who has been a proponent of Kitty and Christopher ending up together from the start!
I love Kitty’s new superhero powers and abilities which makes her less than human now thanks to the drugs that Jeff was forced to take and her subsequent pregnancy. But, it also makes her less encumbered on others to protect her from nasty villains who want to eliminate her threat which we find Kitty saving others. I even found humor in the fact that Kitty is Enemy Number One to be eliminated by those who want to rule the world.
For the record: I still don't much care for Jeffrey or his fits of jealously when it comes to Kitty and her being touchy feelie with anyone but him. I don't care for jealous men, or women under any circumstances. What is the point of trust if one is too stupid to realize that the person he is with loves him more than life itself?
I enjoyed the fact that she partnered up with Pontiff White to bring the conspiracy to an end. Who knew that White was such a badass? It seems that Kitty knows how to recruit the right people for the right job and White is definitely that person.
Huge negative for me is the amount of characters that Koch has created. You truly and seriously need a scorecard, or to take notes over the course of the story to remember what characters are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Yes, there were a bunch killed off by Kitty and crew, but still, more condensing is needed.
Interesting story twist at the end of the book with Jeff, Kitty and others getting new jobs and others stepping in to take theirs.
I rolled my eyes a few times, especially the part where James Reader, who I love, and the human pilots under Kitty are naming each and every single place that Kitty and Jeff have had sex.
"Alien Diplomacy" will release in April 2012
"Alien vs. Alien" will release in December 2012.
*Genre* Science Fiction/Romance
*Review*
*Rating* 3.5
*Genre* Science Fiction/Romance
Alien Proliferation is the fourth novel in the Katherine “Kitty” Katt-Martini series by Gini Koch. I added the Martini to the end of Kitty’s name since she is now happily married to Alpha Centaurion Commander Jeffrey Martini and expecting their first child as the story unfolds.
Kitty goes by several other names as well like Kitty Katt-Martini, Commander Martini of the Airborne Division, as well as Missus Martini. I honestly was waiting for someone to call her Mama Katz! Hey, I’m a child of the 60’s what can I say! Besides, the name could also be used by her mother Angela Katt.
Kitty is nearing the end of her pregnancy and she’s not exactly thrilled to be desk bound by her husband who fears that someone will attempt to harm her and take the baby away from them. Jeffrey, being an empath, pretty much weighs on her hand and foot and guesses her every need.Definitely a huge plus in my book.
The Alpha Centaurions are worried that Kitty’s baby may be fundamentally changed in an unknown way because Jeff was exposed to a Surcenthuman drug during Operation Drug Addict that nearly tore the couple apart.
(You need to read the series from the start to understand that Kitty comes up with all sorts of strange names for operations against aliens and humans who work with them.)
On another front, it seems that everyone that Kitty holds near and dear, be friends or family, have been targeted by an unknown agent of discourse for elimination or capture. This includes threats against her mother Angela who is in charge of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit, and her best friend Charles Reynolds who is in charge of the CIA’s Extraterrestrial Division.
*Thoughts*
I still find humor and appeal when it comes to Kitty and her adventures. Her snarky and sarcastic character still has the ability to turn on a dime and figure out things before anyone else, including her conspiracy latent friend Charles Reynolds. It's nice adding the role as new mother to her arsenal as well.
I may be in the minority here on my review but that is fine. I really thought this book could have been condensed into less than 400 pages. There was too much other stuff going on that could have been removed from the story. I also thought it might have been one of the weaker books in the series thus far yet also one of the more interesting in that we see how Kitty and Jeff grow into being parents for the first time.
This book also appears to be a bridge to yet another story arc now that Kitty is superhuman and has the abilities of an A-C. How the little girl will eventually play into this series is yet to be seen. I for one, absolutely love the name of Kitty and Jeff's daughter. Being this is a science fiction series, of sorts, I could even see a spin-off series in the not too distant future starring her.
I really felt for Christopher at one point in this book. Thankfully, in the end, it appears that everything will work out fine for him and YES, he even finds love with someone other than Kitty which shocked even me who has been a proponent of Kitty and Christopher ending up together from the start!
I love Kitty’s new superhero powers and abilities which makes her less than human now thanks to the drugs that Jeff was forced to take and her subsequent pregnancy. But, it also makes her less encumbered on others to protect her from nasty villains who want to eliminate her threat which we find Kitty saving others. I even found humor in the fact that Kitty is Enemy Number One to be eliminated by those who want to rule the world.
For the record: I still don't much care for Jeffrey or his fits of jealously when it comes to Kitty and her being touchy feelie with anyone but him. I don't care for jealous men, or women under any circumstances. What is the point of trust if one is too stupid to realize that the person he is with loves him more than life itself?
I enjoyed the fact that she partnered up with Pontiff White to bring the conspiracy to an end. Who knew that White was such a badass? It seems that Kitty knows how to recruit the right people for the right job and White is definitely that person.
Huge negative for me is the amount of characters that Koch has created. You truly and seriously need a scorecard, or to take notes over the course of the story to remember what characters are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Yes, there were a bunch killed off by Kitty and crew, but still, more condensing is needed.
Interesting story twist at the end of the book with Jeff, Kitty and others getting new jobs and others stepping in to take theirs.
I rolled my eyes a few times, especially the part where James Reader, who I love, and the human pilots under Kitty are naming each and every single place that Kitty and Jeff have had sex.
"Alien Diplomacy" will release in April 2012
"Alien vs. Alien" will release in December 2012.
September 27, 2021
Book 4: Alien Proliferation Romantic Idealism and the Theatre of Resistance in the Themes of Gini Koch
Herein superpowered figures which echo Milton’s rebel angel and Nietzsche’s Superman must grapple with the consequences of power in its destructive and liberating duality of forces, allegories of revolutionary states which become the tyrannies they seized power from, and like the gilded figures of Gustave Klimt devolving into abstraction and geometric mosaics of symbols, struggle to free themselves from a dehumanizing system of elite hierarchies of wealth, power, and privilege which threatens to consume them.
To win free of tyrants who would enslave and destroy them, her heroes and heroines must seize power and become tyrants themselves; it is a story as old as humankind, and it remains to be seen whether, once we have seized our power and cast those who claim and would enslave us down from their thrones, we can then abandon power over others and the social use of force before it destroys us.
Gini Koch’s epic of the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force foregrounds the central issue of Romantic Idealism, the dialectics of love and authoritarian power, for here also the Ring of Power over others as dominion and elite hegemony can only be wielded by one who like Alberich the dwarf has renounced love and thereby become dehumanized and monstrous; authoritarian tyrannies of force and control.
It is an epic of the revolutionary struggle to free ourselves from state terror and tyranny now unfolding as street theatre throughout the world, and as old as civilization. Of the many elements of Romantic Idealism in the works of Gini Koch to be considered, are her multilayered references to Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Byron, and Milton’s rebel angel. Her novels interrogate the project of Transhumanism as a form of Romantic Idealism, much as Mary Shelly does in Frankenstein or Philip K Dick in Blade Runner, reimaginations of a rich mythology and fairytale tradition of protean machine-animal-human-superbeing transformations and of Milton’s Rebel Angel.
We must begin our interrogation of Gini Koch’s sources and references in Romantic Idealism with their origins in Milton’s magnificent Rebel Angel.
A gorgeous synthesis of classical paganism and Puritan Christianity, John Milton’s epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, reimaginations of the Old and New Testaments respectively, form an extended meditation on the implications of free will, and an exposition of the paradoxes of Christian theology and its social and political consequences. Hubris and sin are here equivalences; Biblical evils bear within themselves the heroism of Greek myths, and the rebel angel and tempter is a mask of Prometheus.
Puritan and ideologist of Cromwell’s Glorious Revolution, Milton of course celebrates and valorizes Reformation Christianity as a weapon against the imperial power of the Catholic Church and the divine right of kings, but also foregrounds its inherent inconsistencies and satirizes its misogyny and authoritarianism. His intent is to provide a Biblical counter narrative which could serve as the philosophical basis of the anti-aristocratic class war he and his fellow revolutionaries were engaged in.
In part a direct polemic against Charles the Second, Milton’s vast hybrid mythology of rebellion had a lasting historical impact beyond its influence on the English Romantics; championed by Thomas Paine, key principles of Milton’s were written into the American Declaration of Independence. Among them is the Neo-Platonic ideal of a republic which exists only to secure those rights which individuals cannot secure for themselves; in some respects the American revolution echoes and realizes its English forebear as a long term consequence.
His revolution has now become our traditional conservatism; so the boundaries of the Forbidden and the unknown shift and change over time. Yet hidden within this story is another, which challenges the theology of the surface narrative, an ouroboros swallowing its tail in metafictional splendor and dichotomous interdependence. For his twin epics may be read both as the pinnacle of Christian literature and its subversion.
Here is the origin of the project of Romantic Idealism and a stratum of sources and references in the Aliens series of Gini Koch which balance and reinterpret her myth of Exile and Return; the magnificent song of rebellion and freedom, defiance in the face of overwhelming force and heroic resistance to tyranny that is John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Regained.
The figure of the Romantic hero was codified by Byron from sources which include Milton, Prometheus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich von Schiller. This begins with his Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, which like Beethoven’s Eroica describes the triumph and tragedy of Idealism, both of which inspired Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, and to which Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Anthony Burgess’s Napoleon Symphony, and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion are direct replies in a great conversation across centuries.
The whole of Science Fiction as a genre belongs to this tradition, as well as those of Absurdism and Surrealism.
Of Melville; To each of us his own White Whale, to lift us beyond our limits in pursuit of the impossible; this gift has Herman Melville given us in his magnificent novel Moby Dick, written as an answer to the Book of Job.
And yet more; fables which intertwine with our histories to magnify and deepen us through the dreams in which we live, the courage to embrace our passions and our shadows as their master and yield the darkness as a forge of destiny rather than be consumed by them, to live unconquered and free, and finally the glorious mad quest to strike through the mask of illusion which is the material world and with rapture and terror seize the creative power and vision of the Infinite which lies beyond; Herman Melville charted themes of Romantic Idealism with the subversive intent of Victor Hugo’s social realism and the interrogation of traditional religious values through its symbols of his direct model Nathaniel Hawthorne.
There are other layers to the correspondence of ideas between Gini Koch and Herman Melville, who describes and questions the arbitrary nature of rule bound systems and of reality, and moreover is revolutionary and transgressive.
In his great book Moby Dick, we have a Marxist- environmentalist diatribe against capitalism valorizing workingmen’s labor in the form of a critique of the Romantic project of extending ourselves into nature through technology for the purpose of dominating and exploiting its resources, harnessed to a narrative which is primarily an exploration of men’s relationships with other men and starring the beautiful and very human marriage of his narrator Ishmael and the tattooed Islander Queequeg.
Melville here reimagines for us the crime for which Saint Valentine was executed by the Roman empire on February 14 278 AD; performing gay marriages in defiance of Imperial law, adelphopoiesis or brother-making which refers to his marrying Roman soldiers not to their girlfriends but to one another, the wedding of same sex couples under Christian law which Emperor Claudius II forbid, as related by John Boswell in his Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. This finds echoes in Gini Koch’s gender reversed Edenic pantheon and Kitty as the transgender figure of Adam, and also in the coded transgressive relationships between her heroine Kitty and her monstrous adversaries which are the true romances of her stories as myths of transformation.
Though mad Ahab is the tragic Romantic hero of the story and referential to Victor Frankenstein, the whale is its main character; it is the epic of a nonhuman personification of unconquerable nature. Moby Dick is also a figure of the ferocious patriarchal god of the Old Testament; the novel is laden with religious symbolism and images, and its humanism prefigures Freud in Totem and Taboo and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
And so we come to the novel which created the modern world, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
Our monsters, ourselves; genius, madness, inspiration, the quest to become as gods; who among us has not longed to steal the divine fire, to look beyond ourselves, to defy all limits and laws? To be, even for a moment, the unconquered Victor Frankenstein?
Yet as Prospero said of Caliban, we must also say of Frankenstein's monster; "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."
As in Jeff VanderMeer's retelling of Frankenstein in the novel Borne and the telenovela Lucifer which reimagines Milton’s Paradise Regained, Mary Shelly's glorious novel was also about the abandonment of a child who is no longer perfect, among a number of other themes, including the origins of violence.
A major theme of the novel Frankenstein is the monstrosity of God, who like Victor creates and then abandons his child when it is imperfect and no longer a reflection of his image, when we become our own free and independent beings. Yes, Victor wants to become a god, which is why the story resonates with everyone, and is an allegory of the failure of science to realize Idealist visions of humanity, the novel being both a codification and critique of Romantic Idealism.
I like and admire the character of Victor, and have used variants of his name as aliases because he is a figure of Milton's rebel angel, but also the monster, a figure of the Shadow based on Caliban in The Tempest. The story is about their relationship as parent and abandoned and damaged child.
Frankenstein addresses themes of science versus nature, reason versus passion, and both of these within a Promethean rebellion against God, authority, and universal Law as a form of Idealism; this from the perspective of the monster's creator.
From the monster's view, the novel portrays the disfigurement of the soul through abandonment by a parent who also functions as a figure of a creator-god and of Authority, known as the problem of the Deus Absconditus which refers to the god who bound us to his laws and then abandoned us to create ourselves in revolutionary struggle to free ourselves from them, a god whose tragic flaws are reflected in the flaws of our humanity and the brokenness of the world, who broke the mould of humankind and then ran away before he was caught. He is also a tyrannical parent who drives the child to achievement and supremacy- what the Greeks called Arete or Virtue but also denoting superiority as with Achilles in the Iliad, one of Mary Shelly's sources- in a chosen arena but who like Alberich in Wagner’s Ring cannot love, rendering all victory meaningless and hollow, dehumanizing the child and shaping a vessel of rage and vengeance, with the iron self discipline and will to enact subjugation of others in their turn, terrible and pathetic and with the grandeur of a tortured defiant beast trapped in the same flesh as the innocent who needs to be loved and cannot understand why he seems monstrous to others. It is about birthing monsters, and the chaotic plasticity of identity and relationships.
As written by Octave Mirbeau in The Torture Garden; “Monsters, monsters! But there are no monsters! What you call monsters are superior forms, or forms beyond your understanding. Aren't the gods monsters? Isn't a man of genius a monster, like a tiger or a spider, like all individuals who live beyond social lies, in the dazzling and divine immortality of things? Why, I too then-am a monster!”
A story which is at once Greek tragedy and Freudian study of the process and relations between the id, ego, and superego, with a third parallel storyline relating a Romantic reimagination of Biblical Genesis like that of Blake whose mythos serves Gini Koch as a model for her own, it is both the apotheosis of Romantic Idealism and its first criticism, exegesis and classical myth, dialectic on responsibility and discourse on Aristotle's categories of being, critique of Rousseau's natural man and of Nietzsche's Superman which it also inspired in a recursive loop of influence across the seas of time. Its author was a Pythian visionary whose insight reached centuries into the future, and whose immense scholarship reimagined some of the greatest works of our historical civilization.
Mary Shelly's influence echoes through time, multiplies, and reshapes the contexts of its polymorphous meanings. One cannot think of Kafka's Gregor Samsa without thinking of his original, the dual-aspected monster-child created to bind our nature with reason, nor read her sources and references in the prophecies of William Blake and Milton's Paradise Lost without reevaluating them in terms of Mary Shelly's novel; her work resonates through past and future, and what touches, it changes.
Who can read the work of Emily Bronte without the meaning of her great novel Wuthering Heights changing with our awareness that its author thought of herself as Victor Frankenstein and as the titan Prometheus cast out of heaven like Milton's rebel angel? That Heathcliff is her monster, a demon to be united with in an exalted Nietzschean rapture of transformative rebirth? And does this not change one's reading of her source Frankenstein?
A nested set of puzzle box themes and contexts, multiple narrative threads which create paradoxes of meaning, role reversals and inversions of identities, and the questioning of the mission of civilization and the morality of progress; Mary Shelly created the modern world with her great book Frankenstein.
Wuthering Heights reimagines the mythology of human origins as the awakening and progress from an animal state, much like Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood or Ted Hughes version of Ovid's Metamorphosis. Like its models Paradise Lost and Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights is both central to the tradition of Romantic Idealism and a critique of it, a dialectical interrogation of the values of Platonic philosophy. Its themes and ideas echo through the works of Iris Murdoch and continue to be relevant after two hundred years.
Published a generation after Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and referential to its themes, with the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his monster transposed to Catherine and Heathcliff and the relational dynamic shifted from parent-child to that of lovers, Wuthering Heights is among the origin texts of feminism. I recommend it for an introductory course of study on feminism in literature along with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Sylvia Plath embodied and re-enacted the relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff with Ted Hughes; Ted Hughes cast himself and Sylvia Plath in the roles as Orpheus and Eurydice as a life performance, the myth being Emily Bronte’s primary source in Wuthering Heights, and we can study its actual praxis in their biographies as theatre. Its nuances as a central myth of our civilization can also be seen in its fairytale version, Beauty and the Beast, in the gorgeous film by Jean Cocteau.
My history with this book begins when as a curious twelve year old I asked my mother, “How do people know if they are a boy or a girl? How do we choose?”
To which she replied, “Everyone is both, of course. Discovering how we like to play the game is one of life’s great adventures.” And she gave me Wuthering Heights to read.
Its relevance to my question was not immediately apparent to me. We may ask, as I did when I first began to read it, "But mom, where is her ax?" To which the answer was, "She has come to redeem and awaken our true nature, not to destroy our cages". So also with Gini Koch’s heroine Kitty, whose Medusa like power of vision appropriates the Male Gaze and transforms it into the power to see others true selves and release them to be free, and to mutually assimilate the qualities of her adversaries and transform them both.
With time I came to understand Catherine and Heathcliff as the dual nature of a whole person, in a story of transformative rebirth and the renewal of the world. Only secondarily is the novel about revolutionary political and social change, seizure of power, and freedom from arbitrary categories of being.
It is a measure of the distance we have come since it was written that my expectation as a young reader was that Heathcliff was obviously of demonic origin, and there would be something like Buffy's Ax of Slaying somewhere. Plus, written by one of the infamous girls called the Three Weird Sisters in reference to the Fates and to the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and not about magic? Alas, we await that version of the novel.
The novel that Emily Bronte wrote is very different. There are at least three stories here, a narrative puzzle box which employs the device of self referential interlocking layers of thematic and narrative structure as if written two hundred years later, much as Gini Koch deploys interdependent plots which can resolve each other; the relationships of creative and destructive forces in the universe as reflected and embodied in ourselves and our passions, the origin myth of human emergence from an animal state, and the power dynamics of sex, gender, and identity in male-female relations.
Heathcliff is a monster, and the story arc foregrounds his redemption through love, but I find interesting the fact that he is a monster who is theriomorphic, based on Emily’s beloved dog, whom she used to batter in psychotic rages and ritualistically provoke into savagery as a proxy of her own wildness. Yet this transgressive and bizarre cross-species relationship, with its chiaroscuro of sadomasochistic and fetishistic elements, has never been reimagined in literature as the allegorical fable of the limits of the human and our relationship with our own animal nature as the werewolf story it so obviously is.
Also, the frame story is one of madness and love; it describes a path of return to sanity in a healing process akin to modern psychotherapy practice. Was the return from madness her own?
Gini Koch’s whole Aliens series may be read as a therapy journal, akin to that of Akutagawa’s Kappa or Jung’s Red Book, and the clues of its origins as a Hobgoblin’s Broken Mirror are rife and scattered throughout her works. Kitty and her various Masterminds as the Big Bad of her novels reflect each other because they are aspects of its author, bound together in one flesh as titanic struggle and ritual
Herein superpowered figures which echo Milton’s rebel angel and Nietzsche’s Superman must grapple with the consequences of power in its destructive and liberating duality of forces, allegories of revolutionary states which become the tyrannies they seized power from, and like the gilded figures of Gustave Klimt devolving into abstraction and geometric mosaics of symbols, struggle to free themselves from a dehumanizing system of elite hierarchies of wealth, power, and privilege which threatens to consume them.
To win free of tyrants who would enslave and destroy them, her heroes and heroines must seize power and become tyrants themselves; it is a story as old as humankind, and it remains to be seen whether, once we have seized our power and cast those who claim and would enslave us down from their thrones, we can then abandon power over others and the social use of force before it destroys us.
Gini Koch’s epic of the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force foregrounds the central issue of Romantic Idealism, the dialectics of love and authoritarian power, for here also the Ring of Power over others as dominion and elite hegemony can only be wielded by one who like Alberich the dwarf has renounced love and thereby become dehumanized and monstrous; authoritarian tyrannies of force and control.
It is an epic of the revolutionary struggle to free ourselves from state terror and tyranny now unfolding as street theatre throughout the world, and as old as civilization. Of the many elements of Romantic Idealism in the works of Gini Koch to be considered, are her multilayered references to Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Byron, and Milton’s rebel angel. Her novels interrogate the project of Transhumanism as a form of Romantic Idealism, much as Mary Shelly does in Frankenstein or Philip K Dick in Blade Runner, reimaginations of a rich mythology and fairytale tradition of protean machine-animal-human-superbeing transformations and of Milton’s Rebel Angel.
We must begin our interrogation of Gini Koch’s sources and references in Romantic Idealism with their origins in Milton’s magnificent Rebel Angel.
A gorgeous synthesis of classical paganism and Puritan Christianity, John Milton’s epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, reimaginations of the Old and New Testaments respectively, form an extended meditation on the implications of free will, and an exposition of the paradoxes of Christian theology and its social and political consequences. Hubris and sin are here equivalences; Biblical evils bear within themselves the heroism of Greek myths, and the rebel angel and tempter is a mask of Prometheus.
Puritan and ideologist of Cromwell’s Glorious Revolution, Milton of course celebrates and valorizes Reformation Christianity as a weapon against the imperial power of the Catholic Church and the divine right of kings, but also foregrounds its inherent inconsistencies and satirizes its misogyny and authoritarianism. His intent is to provide a Biblical counter narrative which could serve as the philosophical basis of the anti-aristocratic class war he and his fellow revolutionaries were engaged in.
In part a direct polemic against Charles the Second, Milton’s vast hybrid mythology of rebellion had a lasting historical impact beyond its influence on the English Romantics; championed by Thomas Paine, key principles of Milton’s were written into the American Declaration of Independence. Among them is the Neo-Platonic ideal of a republic which exists only to secure those rights which individuals cannot secure for themselves; in some respects the American revolution echoes and realizes its English forebear as a long term consequence.
His revolution has now become our traditional conservatism; so the boundaries of the Forbidden and the unknown shift and change over time. Yet hidden within this story is another, which challenges the theology of the surface narrative, an ouroboros swallowing its tail in metafictional splendor and dichotomous interdependence. For his twin epics may be read both as the pinnacle of Christian literature and its subversion.
Here is the origin of the project of Romantic Idealism and a stratum of sources and references in the Aliens series of Gini Koch which balance and reinterpret her myth of Exile and Return; the magnificent song of rebellion and freedom, defiance in the face of overwhelming force and heroic resistance to tyranny that is John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Regained.
The figure of the Romantic hero was codified by Byron from sources which include Milton, Prometheus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich von Schiller. This begins with his Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, which like Beethoven’s Eroica describes the triumph and tragedy of Idealism, both of which inspired Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, and to which Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Anthony Burgess’s Napoleon Symphony, and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion are direct replies in a great conversation across centuries.
The whole of Science Fiction as a genre belongs to this tradition, as well as those of Absurdism and Surrealism.
Of Melville; To each of us his own White Whale, to lift us beyond our limits in pursuit of the impossible; this gift has Herman Melville given us in his magnificent novel Moby Dick, written as an answer to the Book of Job.
And yet more; fables which intertwine with our histories to magnify and deepen us through the dreams in which we live, the courage to embrace our passions and our shadows as their master and yield the darkness as a forge of destiny rather than be consumed by them, to live unconquered and free, and finally the glorious mad quest to strike through the mask of illusion which is the material world and with rapture and terror seize the creative power and vision of the Infinite which lies beyond; Herman Melville charted themes of Romantic Idealism with the subversive intent of Victor Hugo’s social realism and the interrogation of traditional religious values through its symbols of his direct model Nathaniel Hawthorne.
There are other layers to the correspondence of ideas between Gini Koch and Herman Melville, who describes and questions the arbitrary nature of rule bound systems and of reality, and moreover is revolutionary and transgressive.
In his great book Moby Dick, we have a Marxist- environmentalist diatribe against capitalism valorizing workingmen’s labor in the form of a critique of the Romantic project of extending ourselves into nature through technology for the purpose of dominating and exploiting its resources, harnessed to a narrative which is primarily an exploration of men’s relationships with other men and starring the beautiful and very human marriage of his narrator Ishmael and the tattooed Islander Queequeg.
Melville here reimagines for us the crime for which Saint Valentine was executed by the Roman empire on February 14 278 AD; performing gay marriages in defiance of Imperial law, adelphopoiesis or brother-making which refers to his marrying Roman soldiers not to their girlfriends but to one another, the wedding of same sex couples under Christian law which Emperor Claudius II forbid, as related by John Boswell in his Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. This finds echoes in Gini Koch’s gender reversed Edenic pantheon and Kitty as the transgender figure of Adam, and also in the coded transgressive relationships between her heroine Kitty and her monstrous adversaries which are the true romances of her stories as myths of transformation.
Though mad Ahab is the tragic Romantic hero of the story and referential to Victor Frankenstein, the whale is its main character; it is the epic of a nonhuman personification of unconquerable nature. Moby Dick is also a figure of the ferocious patriarchal god of the Old Testament; the novel is laden with religious symbolism and images, and its humanism prefigures Freud in Totem and Taboo and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
And so we come to the novel which created the modern world, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
Our monsters, ourselves; genius, madness, inspiration, the quest to become as gods; who among us has not longed to steal the divine fire, to look beyond ourselves, to defy all limits and laws? To be, even for a moment, the unconquered Victor Frankenstein?
Yet as Prospero said of Caliban, we must also say of Frankenstein's monster; "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."
As in Jeff VanderMeer's retelling of Frankenstein in the novel Borne and the telenovela Lucifer which reimagines Milton’s Paradise Regained, Mary Shelly's glorious novel was also about the abandonment of a child who is no longer perfect, among a number of other themes, including the origins of violence.
A major theme of the novel Frankenstein is the monstrosity of God, who like Victor creates and then abandons his child when it is imperfect and no longer a reflection of his image, when we become our own free and independent beings. Yes, Victor wants to become a god, which is why the story resonates with everyone, and is an allegory of the failure of science to realize Idealist visions of humanity, the novel being both a codification and critique of Romantic Idealism.
I like and admire the character of Victor, and have used variants of his name as aliases because he is a figure of Milton's rebel angel, but also the monster, a figure of the Shadow based on Caliban in The Tempest. The story is about their relationship as parent and abandoned and damaged child.
Frankenstein addresses themes of science versus nature, reason versus passion, and both of these within a Promethean rebellion against God, authority, and universal Law as a form of Idealism; this from the perspective of the monster's creator.
From the monster's view, the novel portrays the disfigurement of the soul through abandonment by a parent who also functions as a figure of a creator-god and of Authority, known as the problem of the Deus Absconditus which refers to the god who bound us to his laws and then abandoned us to create ourselves in revolutionary struggle to free ourselves from them, a god whose tragic flaws are reflected in the flaws of our humanity and the brokenness of the world, who broke the mould of humankind and then ran away before he was caught. He is also a tyrannical parent who drives the child to achievement and supremacy- what the Greeks called Arete or Virtue but also denoting superiority as with Achilles in the Iliad, one of Mary Shelly's sources- in a chosen arena but who like Alberich in Wagner’s Ring cannot love, rendering all victory meaningless and hollow, dehumanizing the child and shaping a vessel of rage and vengeance, with the iron self discipline and will to enact subjugation of others in their turn, terrible and pathetic and with the grandeur of a tortured defiant beast trapped in the same flesh as the innocent who needs to be loved and cannot understand why he seems monstrous to others. It is about birthing monsters, and the chaotic plasticity of identity and relationships.
As written by Octave Mirbeau in The Torture Garden; “Monsters, monsters! But there are no monsters! What you call monsters are superior forms, or forms beyond your understanding. Aren't the gods monsters? Isn't a man of genius a monster, like a tiger or a spider, like all individuals who live beyond social lies, in the dazzling and divine immortality of things? Why, I too then-am a monster!”
A story which is at once Greek tragedy and Freudian study of the process and relations between the id, ego, and superego, with a third parallel storyline relating a Romantic reimagination of Biblical Genesis like that of Blake whose mythos serves Gini Koch as a model for her own, it is both the apotheosis of Romantic Idealism and its first criticism, exegesis and classical myth, dialectic on responsibility and discourse on Aristotle's categories of being, critique of Rousseau's natural man and of Nietzsche's Superman which it also inspired in a recursive loop of influence across the seas of time. Its author was a Pythian visionary whose insight reached centuries into the future, and whose immense scholarship reimagined some of the greatest works of our historical civilization.
Mary Shelly's influence echoes through time, multiplies, and reshapes the contexts of its polymorphous meanings. One cannot think of Kafka's Gregor Samsa without thinking of his original, the dual-aspected monster-child created to bind our nature with reason, nor read her sources and references in the prophecies of William Blake and Milton's Paradise Lost without reevaluating them in terms of Mary Shelly's novel; her work resonates through past and future, and what touches, it changes.
Who can read the work of Emily Bronte without the meaning of her great novel Wuthering Heights changing with our awareness that its author thought of herself as Victor Frankenstein and as the titan Prometheus cast out of heaven like Milton's rebel angel? That Heathcliff is her monster, a demon to be united with in an exalted Nietzschean rapture of transformative rebirth? And does this not change one's reading of her source Frankenstein?
A nested set of puzzle box themes and contexts, multiple narrative threads which create paradoxes of meaning, role reversals and inversions of identities, and the questioning of the mission of civilization and the morality of progress; Mary Shelly created the modern world with her great book Frankenstein.
Wuthering Heights reimagines the mythology of human origins as the awakening and progress from an animal state, much like Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood or Ted Hughes version of Ovid's Metamorphosis. Like its models Paradise Lost and Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights is both central to the tradition of Romantic Idealism and a critique of it, a dialectical interrogation of the values of Platonic philosophy. Its themes and ideas echo through the works of Iris Murdoch and continue to be relevant after two hundred years.
Published a generation after Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and referential to its themes, with the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his monster transposed to Catherine and Heathcliff and the relational dynamic shifted from parent-child to that of lovers, Wuthering Heights is among the origin texts of feminism. I recommend it for an introductory course of study on feminism in literature along with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Sylvia Plath embodied and re-enacted the relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff with Ted Hughes; Ted Hughes cast himself and Sylvia Plath in the roles as Orpheus and Eurydice as a life performance, the myth being Emily Bronte’s primary source in Wuthering Heights, and we can study its actual praxis in their biographies as theatre. Its nuances as a central myth of our civilization can also be seen in its fairytale version, Beauty and the Beast, in the gorgeous film by Jean Cocteau.
My history with this book begins when as a curious twelve year old I asked my mother, “How do people know if they are a boy or a girl? How do we choose?”
To which she replied, “Everyone is both, of course. Discovering how we like to play the game is one of life’s great adventures.” And she gave me Wuthering Heights to read.
Its relevance to my question was not immediately apparent to me. We may ask, as I did when I first began to read it, "But mom, where is her ax?" To which the answer was, "She has come to redeem and awaken our true nature, not to destroy our cages". So also with Gini Koch’s heroine Kitty, whose Medusa like power of vision appropriates the Male Gaze and transforms it into the power to see others true selves and release them to be free, and to mutually assimilate the qualities of her adversaries and transform them both.
With time I came to understand Catherine and Heathcliff as the dual nature of a whole person, in a story of transformative rebirth and the renewal of the world. Only secondarily is the novel about revolutionary political and social change, seizure of power, and freedom from arbitrary categories of being.
It is a measure of the distance we have come since it was written that my expectation as a young reader was that Heathcliff was obviously of demonic origin, and there would be something like Buffy's Ax of Slaying somewhere. Plus, written by one of the infamous girls called the Three Weird Sisters in reference to the Fates and to the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and not about magic? Alas, we await that version of the novel.
The novel that Emily Bronte wrote is very different. There are at least three stories here, a narrative puzzle box which employs the device of self referential interlocking layers of thematic and narrative structure as if written two hundred years later, much as Gini Koch deploys interdependent plots which can resolve each other; the relationships of creative and destructive forces in the universe as reflected and embodied in ourselves and our passions, the origin myth of human emergence from an animal state, and the power dynamics of sex, gender, and identity in male-female relations.
Heathcliff is a monster, and the story arc foregrounds his redemption through love, but I find interesting the fact that he is a monster who is theriomorphic, based on Emily’s beloved dog, whom she used to batter in psychotic rages and ritualistically provoke into savagery as a proxy of her own wildness. Yet this transgressive and bizarre cross-species relationship, with its chiaroscuro of sadomasochistic and fetishistic elements, has never been reimagined in literature as the allegorical fable of the limits of the human and our relationship with our own animal nature as the werewolf story it so obviously is.
Also, the frame story is one of madness and love; it describes a path of return to sanity in a healing process akin to modern psychotherapy practice. Was the return from madness her own?
Gini Koch’s whole Aliens series may be read as a therapy journal, akin to that of Akutagawa’s Kappa or Jung’s Red Book, and the clues of its origins as a Hobgoblin’s Broken Mirror are rife and scattered throughout her works. Kitty and her various Masterminds as the Big Bad of her novels reflect each other because they are aspects of its author, bound together in one flesh as titanic struggle and ritual
January 10, 2017
Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales
Quick & Dirty: Super-duper alien fantasy novel with an over-sexed heroine with a crazy sense of humor but the over-abundance of dialogue sometimes kills the pacing.
Opening Sentence: You’d think after fighting parasitic jellyfish things from space that turn humans into fugly monsters, fending off some killer alligators while dodging mystery explosives, and warding off an alien invasion, I’d be able to handle anything, right?
The Review:
The fourth novel in the Katherine “Kitty” Katt urban fantasy series continues with another strange installment into the life of Kitty Katt-Martini. These novels do heavily rely on the previous books but Kitty will do a good job of reminding/recapping what you need to know. This series is really fun for comic book and rock music fans because Kitty often uses these as inspiration. She is a huge Aerosmith fan.
Roughly eight months have passed since the end of Kitty Gets Married… oh, I mean, Alien in the Family. The beginning finds Kitty very much pregnant and really off of her game since no one will let her do anything. A major offensive takes place in Paris drawing Jeff and the rest of the Centurian crew away from Kitty. Then Kitty goes into labor and dies, which she blows off as not actually happening when the others around her treat her differently.
Motherhood changes Kitty for the better (at least in her eyes). Kitty’s smarts have already helped her foil a lot of the evil plans but now she will be more on par with the A-C powers. These powers come just in time because Kitty and her team are entangled in the deadliest scheme so far seen in the novels. Kitty is separated from her husband and her child in order to save the day and the entire A-C race.
Kitty is crazy smart but she does have a singular focus on sex. Her mind often focuses on some sort of sexy act. She often refers to her breasts as torpedoes, it was funny the first few times she said it but the thirty times after was kind of annoying. The one thing that I do like is that Kitty’s mind may wander but she really only has eyes and love for Jeff. Another make or break for this reading adventure might be the fact that every male on the planet seems to have the hots for Kitty, especially when Jeff gets uber jealous which is a lot.
These books are long. The story has many, many resolutions, just when you think the story has been solved there is still something else major that is going to happen. One thing that I think can drag the story down is the insane amount of dialogue because there are so many characters interacting during any of the major scenes that conversations are between so many people it is hard to keep track of who is talking so I often have to reread portions of the conversation. There was one conversation that I think could have completely been taken out of the novel and saved maybe ten pages, when Kitty and another character are trying to show how dense a character is, the conversation just keeps going in circles and is completely monotonous. So that is probably my one main beef with the writing.
Overall, I did have some beefs with the novel. It is dialogue heavy and I can get lost in it at times but I still really enjoy the underlying story with the aliens and how one really strange, outside the box, kick ass human woman can save the day.
Notable Scene:
“You have A-C regenerative powers, and you’re gaining speed and strength. No idea of what else yet.” Tito was reading the results from Melanie’s clipboard. “Standard recovery from an A-C female after pregnancy, by the way. Interesting.”
He pulled his stethoscope out of his scrub pocket and took a listen. “But still only a single human heart. So she’s not an A-C, just gained some of the abilities.”
Melanie nodded. “Her blood is different, so is Jamie’s. So is Jeff’s, but we already knew that. Comparing to the Gowers’ now, and Serene’s.”
Everyone, to a person, looked freaked out. “So, let me get this straight. I get hurt, I’m going to recover right away?” Heads nodded. “And I’m catching up to the A-Cs in the speed department?” More nods. “And I’m getting su-perstrong?” Nods again.
Considered all my reaction options. Wow, they were all the same.
“Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Are you serious?” I started jumping up and down. “This is the GREATEST! I’m Wolverine with boobs! I’m Wolverine with boobs! This is like the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.” Looked at Jeff’s expression. “Um, well, other than marrying Jeff and having Jamie. But right after that.”
FTC Advisory: DAW/Penguin provided me with a copy of Alien Proliferation. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
Quick & Dirty: Super-duper alien fantasy novel with an over-sexed heroine with a crazy sense of humor but the over-abundance of dialogue sometimes kills the pacing.
Opening Sentence: You’d think after fighting parasitic jellyfish things from space that turn humans into fugly monsters, fending off some killer alligators while dodging mystery explosives, and warding off an alien invasion, I’d be able to handle anything, right?
The Review:
The fourth novel in the Katherine “Kitty” Katt urban fantasy series continues with another strange installment into the life of Kitty Katt-Martini. These novels do heavily rely on the previous books but Kitty will do a good job of reminding/recapping what you need to know. This series is really fun for comic book and rock music fans because Kitty often uses these as inspiration. She is a huge Aerosmith fan.
Roughly eight months have passed since the end of Kitty Gets Married… oh, I mean, Alien in the Family. The beginning finds Kitty very much pregnant and really off of her game since no one will let her do anything. A major offensive takes place in Paris drawing Jeff and the rest of the Centurian crew away from Kitty. Then Kitty goes into labor and dies, which she blows off as not actually happening when the others around her treat her differently.
Motherhood changes Kitty for the better (at least in her eyes). Kitty’s smarts have already helped her foil a lot of the evil plans but now she will be more on par with the A-C powers. These powers come just in time because Kitty and her team are entangled in the deadliest scheme so far seen in the novels. Kitty is separated from her husband and her child in order to save the day and the entire A-C race.
Kitty is crazy smart but she does have a singular focus on sex. Her mind often focuses on some sort of sexy act. She often refers to her breasts as torpedoes, it was funny the first few times she said it but the thirty times after was kind of annoying. The one thing that I do like is that Kitty’s mind may wander but she really only has eyes and love for Jeff. Another make or break for this reading adventure might be the fact that every male on the planet seems to have the hots for Kitty, especially when Jeff gets uber jealous which is a lot.
These books are long. The story has many, many resolutions, just when you think the story has been solved there is still something else major that is going to happen. One thing that I think can drag the story down is the insane amount of dialogue because there are so many characters interacting during any of the major scenes that conversations are between so many people it is hard to keep track of who is talking so I often have to reread portions of the conversation. There was one conversation that I think could have completely been taken out of the novel and saved maybe ten pages, when Kitty and another character are trying to show how dense a character is, the conversation just keeps going in circles and is completely monotonous. So that is probably my one main beef with the writing.
Overall, I did have some beefs with the novel. It is dialogue heavy and I can get lost in it at times but I still really enjoy the underlying story with the aliens and how one really strange, outside the box, kick ass human woman can save the day.
Notable Scene:
“You have A-C regenerative powers, and you’re gaining speed and strength. No idea of what else yet.” Tito was reading the results from Melanie’s clipboard. “Standard recovery from an A-C female after pregnancy, by the way. Interesting.”
He pulled his stethoscope out of his scrub pocket and took a listen. “But still only a single human heart. So she’s not an A-C, just gained some of the abilities.”
Melanie nodded. “Her blood is different, so is Jamie’s. So is Jeff’s, but we already knew that. Comparing to the Gowers’ now, and Serene’s.”
Everyone, to a person, looked freaked out. “So, let me get this straight. I get hurt, I’m going to recover right away?” Heads nodded. “And I’m catching up to the A-Cs in the speed department?” More nods. “And I’m getting su-perstrong?” Nods again.
Considered all my reaction options. Wow, they were all the same.
“Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Are you serious?” I started jumping up and down. “This is the GREATEST! I’m Wolverine with boobs! I’m Wolverine with boobs! This is like the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.” Looked at Jeff’s expression. “Um, well, other than marrying Jeff and having Jamie. But right after that.”
FTC Advisory: DAW/Penguin provided me with a copy of Alien Proliferation. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
November 29, 2011
*SPOILERS for books 1-3*
As Alien Proliferation opens, Katherine "Kitty" Katt (now Martini) is nearing the end of her pregnancy, and she's miserable: bed rest, inability to decide on even the smallest baby supplies, and discomfort all combine to make Kitty one cranky agent.
Then, a phone call comes in - Kitty's best friend from college is in trouble. Jeff and Christopher rush out to save the day, but of course it's not that easy: more problems are uncovered than are solved, and then suddenly - there's a baby on the way! Take a (half) alien baby, add the fact that dad had been force-fed untested alien drugs before conception, and you have a white-knuckle delivery on your hands.
From there, things just keep going crazy and Kitty and Jeff's new-parent bliss is clouded by disappearing agents and the realization there's a mole trying to take out the team. What comes next is a lot of action, secret agent stealth, sci-fi conspiracy, and a ton of fun.
My thoughts:
I have been a huge fan of Gini Koch since the first book and Alien Proliferation has everything I've come to love about this series: Smart, funny dialogue, diverse and interesting characters, and boatloads of action.
In addition to the sweet and sexy rapport between Kitty and Jeff, one thing I really liked about Alien Proliferation is that we get to see more of Kitty's relationships with her two BFFs: Chuckie and Reader. I have adored Chuckie since we met him (even before, kind of), and he gets one of the sweetest, saddest lines I've ever read:
He got up, and I handed Jamie to him. He held her well. "She really looks like you. Beautiful baby."
"I still don't see it, but I'll take the compliment for both of us."
He held her for a few minutes, walked around the room with her. He finally handed her back to me. "Thank you."
"For what?"
Chuckie kissed the top of my head. "For letting me pretend."
~page 126, Alien Proiferation
Sooo sweet, right? We (and Kitty) also learn a bit more about Chuckie through some of the other characters he works with. I was very pleased with the amount of information/page time Chuckie had in this book.
The Kitty/Reader relationship is, as always, wow. We were treated to more information about Kitty and Reader's relationship in the previous book, Alien in the Family, but Alien Proliferation gives us more insight from Kitty's POV, and it was moving.
And....Christopher gets a love interest in this book - I know, right?!? He's such a great character and he's had a few hard knocks so I was especially pleased to see him happy. I'm looking forward to seeing them together in future books, giving Jeff and Kitty a run for their money in the "happy and sex-crazed" department.
My issues with this book were really specific to me personally: I had a hard time following some of the conspiracy plot, and Kitty referred to her boobs as "torpedoes" way too much; we get it - they're huge. (and I may have been jealous of Kitty's post-birth recovery; you'll have to read to find out why, lol)
This series is often described as "over the top" which is exactly right - but it's so much fun!! Gini Koch's Alien series holds a proud place on my "Keeper" shelf and Alien Diplomacy is already on my "Books I Can't Wait For" list.
My rating: 4 1/2 stars!
As Alien Proliferation opens, Katherine "Kitty" Katt (now Martini) is nearing the end of her pregnancy, and she's miserable: bed rest, inability to decide on even the smallest baby supplies, and discomfort all combine to make Kitty one cranky agent.
Then, a phone call comes in - Kitty's best friend from college is in trouble. Jeff and Christopher rush out to save the day, but of course it's not that easy: more problems are uncovered than are solved, and then suddenly - there's a baby on the way! Take a (half) alien baby, add the fact that dad had been force-fed untested alien drugs before conception, and you have a white-knuckle delivery on your hands.
From there, things just keep going crazy and Kitty and Jeff's new-parent bliss is clouded by disappearing agents and the realization there's a mole trying to take out the team. What comes next is a lot of action, secret agent stealth, sci-fi conspiracy, and a ton of fun.
My thoughts:
I have been a huge fan of Gini Koch since the first book and Alien Proliferation has everything I've come to love about this series: Smart, funny dialogue, diverse and interesting characters, and boatloads of action.
In addition to the sweet and sexy rapport between Kitty and Jeff, one thing I really liked about Alien Proliferation is that we get to see more of Kitty's relationships with her two BFFs: Chuckie and Reader. I have adored Chuckie since we met him (even before, kind of), and he gets one of the sweetest, saddest lines I've ever read:
He got up, and I handed Jamie to him. He held her well. "She really looks like you. Beautiful baby."
"I still don't see it, but I'll take the compliment for both of us."
He held her for a few minutes, walked around the room with her. He finally handed her back to me. "Thank you."
"For what?"
Chuckie kissed the top of my head. "For letting me pretend."
~page 126, Alien Proiferation
Sooo sweet, right? We (and Kitty) also learn a bit more about Chuckie through some of the other characters he works with. I was very pleased with the amount of information/page time Chuckie had in this book.
The Kitty/Reader relationship is, as always, wow. We were treated to more information about Kitty and Reader's relationship in the previous book, Alien in the Family, but Alien Proliferation gives us more insight from Kitty's POV, and it was moving.
And....Christopher gets a love interest in this book - I know, right?!? He's such a great character and he's had a few hard knocks so I was especially pleased to see him happy. I'm looking forward to seeing them together in future books, giving Jeff and Kitty a run for their money in the "happy and sex-crazed" department.
My issues with this book were really specific to me personally: I had a hard time following some of the conspiracy plot, and Kitty referred to her boobs as "torpedoes" way too much; we get it - they're huge. (and I may have been jealous of Kitty's post-birth recovery; you'll have to read to find out why, lol)
This series is often described as "over the top" which is exactly right - but it's so much fun!! Gini Koch's Alien series holds a proud place on my "Keeper" shelf and Alien Diplomacy is already on my "Books I Can't Wait For" list.
My rating: 4 1/2 stars!
December 29, 2011
Alien Proliferation picks up the story several months after the ending of Alien in the Family with Kitty heavily pregnant and about to give birth to her first child. Being pregnant with an alien / human hybrid has really taken it out of our heroine though so she is stuck on bed rest and feeling rather cranky, luckily she has superdad-to-be and empath Jeff on hand to anticipate her every need. The bad guys aren't going to wait until after the happy event to start causing trouble though and things are going downhill fast. What with a plot to kill both Kitty's best friend and her mother, team members disappearing, a potential mole and some unexpected drugs testing they are in for a bumpy ride. Can Kitty figure out who is behind it all so she can relax and enjoy being a new mum?
It's official, I'm an addict! I literally can't get enough of this series and I don't know how I'm going to survive the four month wait for Alien Diplomacy (yes I have already pre-ordered my copy!). This has become an all time favourite series and now I've finished reading Alien Proliferation all I really want to do is pick up Touched by an Alien and start re-reading the books again from the beginning. If you haven't started this series yet you really don't know what you're missing.
I absolutely love Kitty, she may be heavily pregnant and going slightly insane from an abundance of hormones but she is still top of the witty banter and she has managed to surround herself with the hottest and most supportive team ever. Seriously, I can't imagine what she'd do without these guys. If you've read any of my other reviews for this series then you'll know I'm absolutely crazy about Jeff, I didn't think I could love him more but scenes with him, Kitty and the baby melted me into a puddle. Even his jealousy is hot and that would normally be a complete turn off for me. My heart both broke and jumped for joy for Christopher, I'm so pleased with how things are turning out for him. Chuckie had me in stitches when he was bantering with Jeff (especially one particular scene where he was trying to get Jeff to come home for Kitty) but he also had an incredibly sweet moment with Kitty that brought a tear to my eye. Reader, Gower and ACE - love, love and love some more along with the fly boys and the rest of team Alpha. Not forgetting Kitty's new partner who came as a complete shock to me but an absolutely wonderful one.
Alien Proliferation has everything you'd expect from Gini Koch and this series - romance, action, comedy, shocking twists, swoon worthy hunks (both alien and human), a kick ass heroine, great friendships, an ever increasing cast of fabulous characters (some of them even come with uniforms!), witty banter, an adorable baby (so that's a new one but the baby boom is well and truly on it's way), awesome pet poofies and so much more. OK there may be a little less sex that you'd expect but Kitty has just given birth so even she has to take a bit of a break lol. A fabulous installment to a fabulous series and one I can't wait to continue!
It's official, I'm an addict! I literally can't get enough of this series and I don't know how I'm going to survive the four month wait for Alien Diplomacy (yes I have already pre-ordered my copy!). This has become an all time favourite series and now I've finished reading Alien Proliferation all I really want to do is pick up Touched by an Alien and start re-reading the books again from the beginning. If you haven't started this series yet you really don't know what you're missing.
I absolutely love Kitty, she may be heavily pregnant and going slightly insane from an abundance of hormones but she is still top of the witty banter and she has managed to surround herself with the hottest and most supportive team ever. Seriously, I can't imagine what she'd do without these guys. If you've read any of my other reviews for this series then you'll know I'm absolutely crazy about Jeff, I didn't think I could love him more but scenes with him, Kitty and the baby melted me into a puddle. Even his jealousy is hot and that would normally be a complete turn off for me. My heart both broke and jumped for joy for Christopher, I'm so pleased with how things are turning out for him. Chuckie had me in stitches when he was bantering with Jeff (especially one particular scene where he was trying to get Jeff to come home for Kitty) but he also had an incredibly sweet moment with Kitty that brought a tear to my eye. Reader, Gower and ACE - love, love and love some more along with the fly boys and the rest of team Alpha. Not forgetting Kitty's new partner who came as a complete shock to me but an absolutely wonderful one.
Alien Proliferation has everything you'd expect from Gini Koch and this series - romance, action, comedy, shocking twists, swoon worthy hunks (both alien and human), a kick ass heroine, great friendships, an ever increasing cast of fabulous characters (some of them even come with uniforms!), witty banter, an adorable baby (so that's a new one but the baby boom is well and truly on it's way), awesome pet poofies and so much more. OK there may be a little less sex that you'd expect but Kitty has just given birth so even she has to take a bit of a break lol. A fabulous installment to a fabulous series and one I can't wait to continue!
June 25, 2024
Sadly I had to DNF at chapter 30. I’m convinced that if I pushed through, I might like it as well as the others, but I also can NOT stand some of what’s going on at the moment. I like this series, but certain small issues are wearing on me.
It had TONS of potential, but I cannot take any more childish behavior from some of the characters, I’m tired of the repetitiveness of said behavior. Like the jealousy between Chuckie (guy best friend) and Jeff (husband). Also, okay, we get it. Jeff and Kitty love having relations, but her talking about it ALL.THE.TIME. is overkill.
I’m also already tired of all the men acting like Kitty is the most special woman in the universe. It’s just getting a bit ridiculous and I’ve lost interest.
We already had a coming back from the dead experience with Reader in the previous book, but we can’t make anyone else seem more special than Kitty so she had to die and then come back to life too. Come on…
I’m so disappointed that this bombed for me!😢
It had TONS of potential, but I cannot take any more childish behavior from some of the characters, I’m tired of the repetitiveness of said behavior. Like the jealousy between Chuckie (guy best friend) and Jeff (husband). Also, okay, we get it. Jeff and Kitty love having relations, but her talking about it ALL.THE.TIME. is overkill.
I’m also already tired of all the men acting like Kitty is the most special woman in the universe. It’s just getting a bit ridiculous and I’ve lost interest.
We already had a coming back from the dead experience with Reader in the previous book, but we can’t make anyone else seem more special than Kitty so she had to die and then come back to life too. Come on…
I’m so disappointed that this bombed for me!😢
February 4, 2012
GENRE: Science Fiction Fantasy/Romance
THEME: Alien, Action/Suspense
RECEIVED: Bought
BLOG: http://seeingnight.blogspot.com/
REVIEW:
Gini Koch does it again; her Katherine “Kitty” Katt series is filled with so much action, unbelievably fantastic characters, action that will keep you on your toes and romance that always makes a girl need to fan herself. This is my favorite science fiction book and boy was I excited that this was a long book, so get ready for Kitty kicking some major butt and making you laugh with her one liners.
Alien Proliferation starts off where the previous book leaves off, Kitty is pregnant and she has to deal with not only her emotions but also the effect it has on her very powerful bundle that she has inside her. But in the midst of giving birth many dangers start to pop up, including her best friend from college needed some rescuing, her mother being threatened and of course keeping her new baby safe, along with her new husband calm. It’s all in a days work for Kitty and her life has become a lot more interesting.
Kitty is fantastic as always with her smart wit humor and how she always seems to know what to say at the right moment. How the new Mrs. Martini deals with being a mom is wonderful she loves her little one and all the craziness it comes with. Jeff as a new husband and father is all over the place, usually you would think he would be calmer but he constantly needs to be calmed down and kept from strangling Kitty best guy friend Chuckie.
There were so many great scene and some pretty emotional ones that had me scared for a bit. But I loved every minute of this novel. For all those Christopher fans like me, you’ll be happy this time around for him. He meets a girl that he wants to protect and I look forward to some fun moments with the new couple.
Overall this was another great chapter in the crazy world where aliens exists and look like GQ models. I can’t get enough of the fun characters, insane action and how Koch adds humor in the best of moments. If you enjoyed the res of this series this one wont let you down and if you new to the series, go get the first three a.s.a.p! If only there was a perfect alien hottie for me out there like Martini or Christopher I’d be one happy camper.
RECOMMENDATION:
This is an Adult Novel with Sexual Content, love of kick butt action, Humor and much much more! Fans of Molly Harper and Jennifer Estep would love this series.
THEME: Alien, Action/Suspense
RECEIVED: Bought
BLOG: http://seeingnight.blogspot.com/
REVIEW:
Gini Koch does it again; her Katherine “Kitty” Katt series is filled with so much action, unbelievably fantastic characters, action that will keep you on your toes and romance that always makes a girl need to fan herself. This is my favorite science fiction book and boy was I excited that this was a long book, so get ready for Kitty kicking some major butt and making you laugh with her one liners.
Alien Proliferation starts off where the previous book leaves off, Kitty is pregnant and she has to deal with not only her emotions but also the effect it has on her very powerful bundle that she has inside her. But in the midst of giving birth many dangers start to pop up, including her best friend from college needed some rescuing, her mother being threatened and of course keeping her new baby safe, along with her new husband calm. It’s all in a days work for Kitty and her life has become a lot more interesting.
Kitty is fantastic as always with her smart wit humor and how she always seems to know what to say at the right moment. How the new Mrs. Martini deals with being a mom is wonderful she loves her little one and all the craziness it comes with. Jeff as a new husband and father is all over the place, usually you would think he would be calmer but he constantly needs to be calmed down and kept from strangling Kitty best guy friend Chuckie.
There were so many great scene and some pretty emotional ones that had me scared for a bit. But I loved every minute of this novel. For all those Christopher fans like me, you’ll be happy this time around for him. He meets a girl that he wants to protect and I look forward to some fun moments with the new couple.
Overall this was another great chapter in the crazy world where aliens exists and look like GQ models. I can’t get enough of the fun characters, insane action and how Koch adds humor in the best of moments. If you enjoyed the res of this series this one wont let you down and if you new to the series, go get the first three a.s.a.p! If only there was a perfect alien hottie for me out there like Martini or Christopher I’d be one happy camper.
RECOMMENDATION:
This is an Adult Novel with Sexual Content, love of kick butt action, Humor and much much more! Fans of Molly Harper and Jennifer Estep would love this series.
April 4, 2025
It's been almost nine months since her unusual wedding and Kitty Martini is pregnant with her first child - very pregnant! And everybody is concerned as the Martinis are the poster family for the ACs interspecies wedding and since more couples are married with babies on the way, everybody is looking at Kitty. And she is bored since she is not allowed to join the action and bed rest's never been her thing. But of course their enemies are already hatching a new plan for world domination and destruction and suddenly they discover that someone is testing some drugs on Christopher, then one of Kitty's best friends is calling for help and someone is trying to kill of Kitty's best friend Chuck and her mother - and of course all things happens at once and right after Kitty unexpected early delivery of her sweet baby girl.. during which Kitty almost died! And while Jeff tried to keep Kitty and his daughter out of danger, it seems up to her to rescue them all once again. So, business as usual..
I have to say, it's been a long time since I last read this book and I remember that I was quite unhappy with the over dramatic delivery scene. This time around, it wasn't as bad and I was wondering why I was so annoyed the first and second time. Of course the back-from-the-dead-thing was a bit too much since we just had the same with James in the third book but I thought it kind of fits Kitty and how she rolls.
Since I read book 13 in May, it was interesting still to get back and see how things started. There were little things I forgot or which didn't see the first time. I came across this series five years ago and I'm still hooked and can't wait to read the next book. Kitty is one of my favorite book heroine of all times and even though I read some of the books many times, they are still funny and very enjoyable to read.
Baby Jamie Kat is a key character for the next books to come. She has some strong talents and here we still don't know what she is able to do but we will learn along with Kitty and Jeff what their daughter's talents are. New characters were introduced and some enemies discovered and killed while others escape. I started my own compendium two years ago to keep up with who's who and if you want to start this series, you have to start from the beginning or you are lost.
I have to say, it's been a long time since I last read this book and I remember that I was quite unhappy with the over dramatic delivery scene. This time around, it wasn't as bad and I was wondering why I was so annoyed the first and second time. Of course the back-from-the-dead-thing was a bit too much since we just had the same with James in the third book but I thought it kind of fits Kitty and how she rolls.
Since I read book 13 in May, it was interesting still to get back and see how things started. There were little things I forgot or which didn't see the first time. I came across this series five years ago and I'm still hooked and can't wait to read the next book. Kitty is one of my favorite book heroine of all times and even though I read some of the books many times, they are still funny and very enjoyable to read.
Baby Jamie Kat is a key character for the next books to come. She has some strong talents and here we still don't know what she is able to do but we will learn along with Kitty and Jeff what their daughter's talents are. New characters were introduced and some enemies discovered and killed while others escape. I started my own compendium two years ago to keep up with who's who and if you want to start this series, you have to start from the beginning or you are lost.
November 9, 2011
Any of you who have read reviews of mine previously know two things: I hate trying to write a plot synopsis, and I despise spoilers and the people who disseminate them. If you're reading this review to get either of those things, all I can tell you is that you need to buy this book, read it, enjoy it, and recommend it to all of your friends. OK, you can go now. There's nothing more here for you.
As for the rest of you...well...you need to buy this book, read it, enjoy it, and recommend it to all of your friends, too! This fourth adventure of Katherine "Kitty" Katt (now known alternately as Kitty Katt-Martini, Commander Martini, and Missus Martini, depending on the person addressing her) is, predictably, a load of fun to read. The fun, the plot, the action and the romance all move at a breakneck pace, with no time oeft over for getting bored.
Despite saying earlier that the book is "predictably" a lot of fun, that's one of the only things in this book that IS predictable. One of the joys of Gini Koch's writing is that there are no sacred cows to be observed. There are several huge surprises in this story, things that completely shake up not only the plot of the book, but of the series as a whole. By the time the book comes to an end, roles have rolled, at least one locale is no longer local, and the change that's in the air involves more than just diapers.
In closing, despite my hate of spoilers, all fans of the series have two questions they want answered immediately. How can I resist?
Question: Is Kitty and Jeff's baby a boy or a girl?
Answer: Yes
Question: What's the baby's name?
Answer: I forget. I'm old...leave me alone.
As for the rest of you...well...you need to buy this book, read it, enjoy it, and recommend it to all of your friends, too! This fourth adventure of Katherine "Kitty" Katt (now known alternately as Kitty Katt-Martini, Commander Martini, and Missus Martini, depending on the person addressing her) is, predictably, a load of fun to read. The fun, the plot, the action and the romance all move at a breakneck pace, with no time oeft over for getting bored.
Despite saying earlier that the book is "predictably" a lot of fun, that's one of the only things in this book that IS predictable. One of the joys of Gini Koch's writing is that there are no sacred cows to be observed. There are several huge surprises in this story, things that completely shake up not only the plot of the book, but of the series as a whole. By the time the book comes to an end, roles have rolled, at least one locale is no longer local, and the change that's in the air involves more than just diapers.
In closing, despite my hate of spoilers, all fans of the series have two questions they want answered immediately. How can I resist?
Question: Is Kitty and Jeff's baby a boy or a girl?
Answer: Yes
Question: What's the baby's name?
Answer: I forget. I'm old...leave me alone.
December 26, 2011
I have to admit that I didn’t like "Alien proliferation" as much as the other three books. Don’t get me wrong, it is still an excellent read, but while I thought that first three books in the series were flawless, I could pinpoint some minor minuses in this one.
The first quarter of the book was kind of slow because of Kitty’s pregnancy. But what upseted me the most was that Kitty wasn’t her sharp self. I love this heroine because of her brain, because she gets everything better and faster than any other character. But pregnancy made her slow, forgetful and needy. Happily, our Kitty is back in the second half of the book where we can see her cracking megalomaniac plans and figuring out all conspiracy theories.
By the way, this book wasn’t much on the action like the others were. In “Alien proliferation” instead of fights with superbeings they try to solve conspiracy theories. A lot of them. Actually my head started to hurt trying to understand what’s going on, who is a mole (or if the even have one) and who the bad and the good guys are.
There were some more minor flaws and because of them my actual rating for this one is 4.5 stars
But I still loved this book. I still love Kitty’s humor, her new partner, poofies, the Density Twins, Martini’s jealousy, ACE worship of Kitty, Reader’s cover-boy grin and a lot of other things.
The first quarter of the book was kind of slow because of Kitty’s pregnancy. But what upseted me the most was that Kitty wasn’t her sharp self. I love this heroine because of her brain, because she gets everything better and faster than any other character. But pregnancy made her slow, forgetful and needy. Happily, our Kitty is back in the second half of the book where we can see her cracking megalomaniac plans and figuring out all conspiracy theories.
By the way, this book wasn’t much on the action like the others were. In “Alien proliferation” instead of fights with superbeings they try to solve conspiracy theories. A lot of them. Actually my head started to hurt trying to understand what’s going on, who is a mole (or if the even have one) and who the bad and the good guys are.
There were some more minor flaws and because of them my actual rating for this one is 4.5 stars
But I still loved this book. I still love Kitty’s humor, her new partner, poofies, the Density Twins, Martini’s jealousy, ACE worship of Kitty, Reader’s cover-boy grin and a lot of other things.
November 3, 2011
Four books into the Katherine "Kitty" Katt series and Koch is still going strong.
Once more Koch delivers a wacky, action packed, delightfully fun adventure that keeps you guessing and laughing from the start.
There's quite some emotional moments in this book as well with at least two moments that had us sniffling.
Kitty's adventures have always been a bit over the top (which to me is one of the charms of this series), but in this book certain events sky-rocket totally out of there, to soar back into credible just before you feel like you're being taken on a ride. This is not meant as criticism in case you're wondering. I think it's amazing how Koch comes up with the craziest things and manages to make them totally believable and although Touched by an Alien will probably always be my favorite in this series, Alien Proliferation is a very close second.
Those who read and loved the earlier books in this series will absolutely love this book as well. For those of you who haven't started this series yet: Go get the first three books now and you'll be all up to speed for Alien Proliferation once it's released in December.
We'll impatiently be counting the days until the release of book 5: Alien Diplomacy
Once more Koch delivers a wacky, action packed, delightfully fun adventure that keeps you guessing and laughing from the start.
There's quite some emotional moments in this book as well with at least two moments that had us sniffling.
Kitty's adventures have always been a bit over the top (which to me is one of the charms of this series), but in this book certain events sky-rocket totally out of there, to soar back into credible just before you feel like you're being taken on a ride. This is not meant as criticism in case you're wondering. I think it's amazing how Koch comes up with the craziest things and manages to make them totally believable and although Touched by an Alien will probably always be my favorite in this series, Alien Proliferation is a very close second.
Those who read and loved the earlier books in this series will absolutely love this book as well. For those of you who haven't started this series yet: Go get the first three books now and you'll be all up to speed for Alien Proliferation once it's released in December.
We'll impatiently be counting the days until the release of book 5: Alien Diplomacy
April 4, 2012
Kitty is ready to have her baby, not without complications of course. (I wish she remembered all that stuff but neither did Reader). Jamie is quite special and shows it from the start. While still in recovery Kitty uncovers some serious issues with Christopher that lead them into yet another conspiracy within a conspiracy which also happens to include one of her childhood friends, Amy. All the women seem to be pregnant and therefore out of commission for field work and Kitty is chomping at the bit to be out of bed and part of the action as well. Jeff is typically over protective and especially now so that Jamie has arrived. But once again people are not only after Kitty but her baby and she has to come to the rescue of the men.
Love her with her new powers, and especially her with her new partner White. ACE is a great somehow childlike omnipotent being. The poofs are still great of course. Abigail and Naomi get in on the action some more which is pretty cool, I have a feeling one of them might shack up with Chuckie LOL.
Love her with her new powers, and especially her with her new partner White. ACE is a great somehow childlike omnipotent being. The poofs are still great of course. Abigail and Naomi get in on the action some more which is pretty cool, I have a feeling one of them might shack up with Chuckie LOL.
December 20, 2011
I was pretty disappointed with this installment 2.5 stars. I think there are too many characters now, which when added to the too many crazy plots, is just too much all around. It starts to read like a first grader is telling you about something that happened to them.
We did this. He did this. Then we all went here. Then person x opened the door. Then persons y and z walked through it. He tripped and fell. Then we all laughed. Then person x.... Anyway you get my point. It was a like a play by play of events rather than a novel.
Also, the everybody loves kitty, Kitty is so great, Kitty is so wonderful, let's constantly talk about how amazing kitty is and how everyone wants her inspired some eye rolls on my part, and I actually do love kitty!
I mean you have to kind of give these a pass on a lot of stuff because they are just supposed to be funny and goofy. But this one wasn't as funny as the previous ones, so I guess it was harder for me to overlook the other stuff.
We did this. He did this. Then we all went here. Then person x opened the door. Then persons y and z walked through it. He tripped and fell. Then we all laughed. Then person x.... Anyway you get my point. It was a like a play by play of events rather than a novel.
Also, the everybody loves kitty, Kitty is so great, Kitty is so wonderful, let's constantly talk about how amazing kitty is and how everyone wants her inspired some eye rolls on my part, and I actually do love kitty!
I mean you have to kind of give these a pass on a lot of stuff because they are just supposed to be funny and goofy. But this one wasn't as funny as the previous ones, so I guess it was harder for me to overlook the other stuff.
Read
March 24, 2012Kitty's getting to be too much for me. She has a baby, nearly dies, (not a spoiler, it's in the blurb) and when everyone is showing concern she just blows them off. She hasn't really matured at all over the series, she's still like a squirrel on crack. It was amusing at first, but it's getting old, especially since she's a mother now. But what has really killed it for me is the fact that she claims to have not one, but two soulmates, neither of which are her husband. I get it, different world, author can set it up however she wants, but that doesn't mean I have to read it. I'm getting sick of her cavalier attitude about Jeff's jealousy, because I'm with him on this one. So, the first books in the series were great, but I'm done with them overall.
May 17, 2013
This series is a lot of fun to read. Quick in pacing, exciting and non-stop from start to finish. This book was no exception. It was some of the content that just really drove me insane this time. Like Kitty, I'm a new mother and I guess some of the preposterous insanity (which is always there) just bugged me. The ease in which she goes from giving birth to pumping gallons of breast milk to galavanting around Paris sans recently born child. Also the constant constant constant reference to the "torpedoes" was really irritating. And what finally did me in was the comment about The baby eating like a horse and Jeff was hung like one so it made sense. Really?!? I'll keep reading the series but this one was mostly a miss for me.
could-not-finish
February 23, 2016I could not finish this book. I got to page 86 and I was so not into this book at all. There are all these aside jokes, and "girlfriend" from any gay that happens to be nearby, and after dying twice during childbirth, she'd rather talk about music she likes than push. Finally everyone around yells, "Push!". Okay, what in the hell. This is like slapdash comedy, not the new version the 100 years ago version.
I thought maybe it got better at the end but no, it's Kitty standing in front of everyone going off on one of her tangents that make sense to maybe one other person and that for sure is not the reader. I'm done with this series.
I thought maybe it got better at the end but no, it's Kitty standing in front of everyone going off on one of her tangents that make sense to maybe one other person and that for sure is not the reader. I'm done with this series.
September 27, 2014
For some reason, I just love this series. Slightly corny, action packed, Men-in-Black meets Lara Croft (character, not profession).
Kitty and Jeff (alien hottie) are now married and here comes the baby. As usual, there's no time for laying back and enjoying the new family as bad guys are out to get all of the Alphas and take over (of course).
Armed with her handy dandy iPod and newly formed powers, Kitty's not going to sit back on maternity leave. Oh, no. She ends up in the middle of it all, and saving the day (of course). :)
Kitty and Jeff (alien hottie) are now married and here comes the baby. As usual, there's no time for laying back and enjoying the new family as bad guys are out to get all of the Alphas and take over (of course).
Armed with her handy dandy iPod and newly formed powers, Kitty's not going to sit back on maternity leave. Oh, no. She ends up in the middle of it all, and saving the day (of course). :)
Read
December 7, 2011And once again Gini Koch did not disappoint: the breaak-neck action and witty banter are all back just like the yummy A-Cs and cutie Poofs. As usual so many things happened in a whirlwind you have to hang on not to get lost as not just the A-Cs but Kitty, the mysteries and everything happens like at hurricane-speed. Fantastic new addition to the series, loved it and as always: can't wait for more! :-D
August 25, 2014
3.5 stars.
Some parts really dragged on, and I definitely took notice of Kitty's ego this time around. It got a bit annoying. There were also a few parts in the book that were really slow, when everyone was talking and Kitty basically had to explain everything to all these really smart guys. So it was slow and a bit unbelievable.
Still, though, I found myself liking the action, and Jamie is one interesting baby!
Some parts really dragged on, and I definitely took notice of Kitty's ego this time around. It got a bit annoying. There were also a few parts in the book that were really slow, when everyone was talking and Kitty basically had to explain everything to all these really smart guys. So it was slow and a bit unbelievable.
Still, though, I found myself liking the action, and Jamie is one interesting baby!
December 17, 2011
Another fantastic, fun edition in the Kitt Katt-Martini world. Loved this book. It was a fast, action packed adventure. I thought that i was a bit much sometimes how Kitty always managed to see the schemes and master plans before anyone else but that did help to move the plot along. Definitely love this series and am a dedicated reader.
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