Josh Reviews: Blameless by Gail Carriger

Posted July 10, 2012 by Joshua Burns in / 2 Comments

Title: Blameless
Series: Parasol Protectorate #3
Author: Gail Carriger
Publisher: Orbit
Format: Paperback, 375 pages
Published: September 1st, 2010
ISBN #: 9780316074155 / 0316074155
Genre: Steampunk
My Copy: borrowed
Rating: Paw Rating
Buy:

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.

Managing to make up for the habbernabberies of its predecessor, Blameless only falls short in that these books were not combined into one super book. It is safe to say that this will be a series warranting revisiting if only for the inordinately alliterative Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings and the descriptions of hats. To be more specific about how this book improves on its predecessor: it does not hustle us out the back door with an aching cliffhanger, it does not flip to one character’s perspective only to leave them for the rest of the book, and it does not let its main character suffer from despicable black spots that would make her look like a dolt. No, no instead this book takes a lot of time characterizing Professor Lyall and his incredible administrative duties as Beta. The book gives us a happy ending that we can stomach long enough to reach the next book. And Alexia although not saving the day holds her own and becomes even more important to this delectable world. And let us talk about the world building since that comes from the characters themselves…For a change we get to see the elaborately orange Italy and its odd monastic order of Templars. We are introduced to more friends of Madame Leroux. Madame Leroux unfortunately gets a little more fun poked at her this time. Even Ivy comes off looking less like a dunder. I am having trouble naming who stood out in this entry. Weight is tossed around from character to character in a confident manner thus giving the illusion that there is no center. But make no mistake this remains Alexia’s story.

Books in this series:

Recommendation:	Fascinating world-building. A display of a menagerie of fantasy creatures in an (a)historical setting.
Like this, like that:	Jane Yellowrock series by Faith Hunter, the Alex Craft series by Kalayna Price and the Season of the Moon series by S. M. Reine.

Josh