Blameless Cover

Potential Spoilers here folks, so if you haven’t read Changeless or Soulless, do not read on. Instead, go buy her books or borrow them from your local library!

Quitting her husband’s house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season.

Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London’s vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.

While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires — and they’re armed with pesto.

~ Blameless Back Cover, by Gail Carriger

I had high expectations for Blameless, the third in the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. The plot intrigued me, and she masterfully created suspense at the end of Changeless to propel me into the next book. I hoped the suspense would continue, but unfortunately, I found Blameless dragged. Alexia’s pregnancy was fascinating, but the story had so much “technicality” that I found myself torn. I wanted to move faster through the constant questions about how Alexia could be pregnant and skip ahead to the next bit of action, but I couldn’t bring myself to miss any detail, just in case it was relevant later (like JK Rowling masterfully weaves into her Harry Potter series).

I enjoyed Ms. Carriger’s steam punk technologies, but I don’t think she did as well in explaining the ‘mythology’ behind the preternatural’s history. The templar people of Italy don’t really help matters; their background detracts from the logical Victorian world Alexia lives in. Instead of the pregnancy staying in the realm of “she touched him, so his parts work”, there were many more scientific and mythological explanations, blurring the story lines, and removing the focus from the plot, and from character development. It’s almost like Ms. Carriger figured out why the pregnancy existed as she wrote the book.

I really enjoyed Lord Maccon’s story line in the book, and the unexpected shift in dynamic between him, Biffy and Lord Akeldama. I think this is where Blameless really shines. I’m glad I read the book, and it was decent, but not as refined as Soulless, nor with the constant plots twists of Changeless. If you enjoy the series so far, you won’t regret reading the book, but you might not enjoy it as thoroughly as the other too.

Long live the Parasol Protectorate.

*****

I received a Kobo e-reader for my birthday, and I’m looking for book suggestions. What has you reading electronically?

*****
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