Review by Lora (DivaBetty)
After reading Soulless by Gail Carriger, I was hooked.
Our preternatural heroine, Alexia (we find her witty but sometimes annoying), has married her werewolf hottie Connall Maccon (we LOVE him) and parlayed her newlywed aristocratic status into a post on the Shadow Council--Queen Victoria's advisors on the supernatural.
Suddenly, when the British fleet comes in from India by way of Egypt, all the supernaturals are rendered temporarily mortal and the ghosts are exorcised permanently. The BUR Agency where Connall works and the Shadow Council investigate, debating whether a plague or a new weapon is to blame for the "changelessness".
This phenomenon follows Connall back to Scotland where he goes to settle some business with his former pack, which he abandoned after a betrayal (cue blah blah blah exposition in which he was in every way justified in his actions blah blah). Alexia follows him by dirigible and is tailed by compelling French inventor Madame Lefoux who dresses in men's clothing, has a rather suspicious affiliation with our heroine's equally suspicious former-vampire-drone-turned-ladies'-maid Angelique. Attempts on Alexia's life and rummaging of her belongings ensue at Woolsey Castle where the dwindled former pack is a mess because Connall's successor (nice guy, crappy Alpha) has died. They are pissed at Connall, Connall's pissed at them, and amusing sequences follow in which they are all stuck as mortals but beat the crap out of each other anyway...astonished by how long it takes for natural healing to occur.
The wit abounds, the clever satirical steampunkishness remains charming.
The pseudoscience with the aethographer (telegraph-meets-satellite-phone-booth) and the dirigible felt laborious and overly detailed, perhaps in an unwise authorial attempt to have it MAKE SENSE which it does not. Personally, I like the series and I'm willing to check my disbelief at the doorway for the sake of entertainment but this reminded me of the numerous times in the wretched movie adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife that the silly screenwriter had characters try to "explain" how and why the time traveling occurred instead of letting it be a condition of the story. It just *is*, okay? The aethographer thingie sends messages and is tricky. The dirigible is a blimp with fancy deets. Basta!
Minor complaint: I really enjoyed Ivy Hisselpenny in book 1, Alexia's fashion-victim friend who was both conventional and hilarious. This time around she's caricaturized and Alexia dismisses all of her concerns and feelings in a cavalier manner underscoring my belief that our soulless mc is as caring as a toadstool. By ramping up the ludicrous hysterics, the author reduced a likeable character to another something for Alexia to turn up her nose at--she did that plenty often enough as it was. Is there anyone to whom she doesn't feel superior? Would I be terribly distressed if someone smacked her? The answer to both, sadly, is in the negative.
I won't spoil the WTF ending but I am personally torn between instantly downloading book 3 Blameless or simply chucking this one at the wall. Sufficient to say I believe that someone (namely my adored Connall) is acting out of character for the sake of a cliffhanger.
Our preternatural heroine, Alexia (we find her witty but sometimes annoying), has married her werewolf hottie Connall Maccon (we LOVE him) and parlayed her newlywed aristocratic status into a post on the Shadow Council--Queen Victoria's advisors on the supernatural.
Suddenly, when the British fleet comes in from India by way of Egypt, all the supernaturals are rendered temporarily mortal and the ghosts are exorcised permanently. The BUR Agency where Connall works and the Shadow Council investigate, debating whether a plague or a new weapon is to blame for the "changelessness".
This phenomenon follows Connall back to Scotland where he goes to settle some business with his former pack, which he abandoned after a betrayal (cue blah blah blah exposition in which he was in every way justified in his actions blah blah). Alexia follows him by dirigible and is tailed by compelling French inventor Madame Lefoux who dresses in men's clothing, has a rather suspicious affiliation with our heroine's equally suspicious former-vampire-drone-turned-ladies'-maid Angelique. Attempts on Alexia's life and rummaging of her belongings ensue at Woolsey Castle where the dwindled former pack is a mess because Connall's successor (nice guy, crappy Alpha) has died. They are pissed at Connall, Connall's pissed at them, and amusing sequences follow in which they are all stuck as mortals but beat the crap out of each other anyway...astonished by how long it takes for natural healing to occur.
The wit abounds, the clever satirical steampunkishness remains charming.
The pseudoscience with the aethographer (telegraph-meets-satellite-phone-booth) and the dirigible felt laborious and overly detailed, perhaps in an unwise authorial attempt to have it MAKE SENSE which it does not. Personally, I like the series and I'm willing to check my disbelief at the doorway for the sake of entertainment but this reminded me of the numerous times in the wretched movie adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife that the silly screenwriter had characters try to "explain" how and why the time traveling occurred instead of letting it be a condition of the story. It just *is*, okay? The aethographer thingie sends messages and is tricky. The dirigible is a blimp with fancy deets. Basta!
Minor complaint: I really enjoyed Ivy Hisselpenny in book 1, Alexia's fashion-victim friend who was both conventional and hilarious. This time around she's caricaturized and Alexia dismisses all of her concerns and feelings in a cavalier manner underscoring my belief that our soulless mc is as caring as a toadstool. By ramping up the ludicrous hysterics, the author reduced a likeable character to another something for Alexia to turn up her nose at--she did that plenty often enough as it was. Is there anyone to whom she doesn't feel superior? Would I be terribly distressed if someone smacked her? The answer to both, sadly, is in the negative.
I won't spoil the WTF ending but I am personally torn between instantly downloading book 3 Blameless or simply chucking this one at the wall. Sufficient to say I believe that someone (namely my adored Connall) is acting out of character for the sake of a cliffhanger.
Alexia didn't annoy me in the first book, but she sure did in this one. Someone tries to kill her, and she doesn't mention it to her husband until the end of the book? That's venturing into TSTL territory right there.
ReplyDeleteAnd I might have yelled a little at the ending. Possibly I also wished for a shovel to smack Connall over the head with. Now that he's changeful again, it wouldn't have hurt him much.
This is going to be fairly cryptic, because I don't want to spoil any thing from Changeless. But did you put together the cliffhanger ending with what they learned about soullessness? There is much more heartbreak in Alexia's future. (Unless they find a way around it in Blameless!)
Thank goodness Amazon has finally added the ability to give someone a Kindle book as a gift. Book 3 is on my Christmas list!