I love Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series. You can’t even talk to me about this series, because I go all FANGIRL SQUEE when anyone mentions it. It ranks right up there with the Dresden Files in my estimation, and I tell pretty much anyone who even so much as looks askance at Carriger’s books in the bookstore to buy them right now. DO EEEEET.
Blameless is the third book in the Parasol Protectorate series. I’ve been eagerly awaiting it, because book two, Changeless, ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.
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.
Carriger’s books are action-packed, steeped in well-constructed mysteries, spiced with just the right touch of quirky romance, and hilarious. They’re unique in urban fantasies, being set in an alternate world Victorian London that’s steampunky, supernatural, and always properly matched with its hat and gloves.
Our heroine, Alexia Maccon, nee Tarabotti, the lady Woolsey, is practical, pragmatic, civilized, well-educated, forthright, independent, frequently scandalous, and entirely soulless. Her only supernatural power (so far) is to render vampires and werewolves temporarily human again so long as she touches them, which is occasionally useful, but mostly just bad manners. Since she’s somewhat lacking in supernatural mojo for an urban fantasy heroine, she has to fall back on her biting wit, intelligence, and masterful skill in bashing things over the head with her parasol.
Alexia is surrounded by a cadre of loyal friends and allies, who aid in her adventures. Roll call: Floote, Alexia’s long-standing butler, who is everything a butler should be, including armed and dangerous; Ivy Tunstill, who is incredibly silly, has terrible taste in hats, and hides an intellect of her own behind her goofy demeanor; Madam Lefoux, a French lesbian mad scientist who scandalizes the London ton by dressing in men’s clothes, and who has a bit of a crush on Alexia; Professor Lyall, the Woolsey pack Beta, who, despite the habit of turning four-legged and furry, is every inch the well-educated, keen-minded gentleman; and Lord Akeldama, the eminently stylish rogue vampire who makes a habit of knowing all the best gossip, and utilizes a vast coterie of fops and dandies as a spy network. I suppose I might also include Alexia’s husband, alpha werewolf Lord Conall Maccon, but he spends much of Blameless on the outs with Alexia and three sheets to the wind, so he wasn’t a lot of use in this book.
Blameless takes the reader on a wild ride across Europe, studded with eccentric characters, danger, gun fights, and ladybugs. We meet a couple of entertaining new mad scientists, one of whom is possessed of a mighty beard and some suspiciously ladybug-like mechanical beetles, and another who is possessed of a poltergeist and a horrible little yappy dog. We stumble into an Order of religious maniacs, meet a mysterious masked savior who turns out to be not-so-mysterious after all, see an ingenious way of keeping someone held prisoner, and endure a series of less-than-adequate teas.
Also, it turns out that Alexia likes pesto almost as much as I do, which only goes to prove her incredible good taste.
The Parasol Protectorate remains an excellent series of books, and its latest edition, Blameless is tons of fun. New readers should start with Soulless, the first book in the series, but fans should drop what they’re doing and rush out to get Blameless. DO EEEET.
