Blameless by Gail Carriger – Review

Published: September 2, 2010

Publisher: Orbit

Series: Parasol Protectorate #3

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal

Pages: 294 (Paperback)

My Rating: 3.5/5.0

 

Synopsis:

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 is the third book of the Parasol Protectorate series: a comedy of manners set in Victorian London, full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.

---

Oh my gosh, these books are like my junk food reads. I just needed something frilly and Victorian with a heavy splash of ridiculousness thrown in and this was the perfect thing for that. At a glance, the characters are goofy and over the top, but the underlying plot is interesting and fairly serious.

Blameless picks up right after the events of Changeless and Alexia has moved back in with her family after her husband Lord Maccon suspected infidelity. THE NERVE!!! While he’s drunk on formaldehyde (because alcohol isn’t strong enough for a werewolf), Alexia is nearly murdered by the vampires. She and her few trusted companions flee to France and then Italy in hopes of gathering information of Alexia’s condition from the Templars. All the while in England poor Professor Lyall is still trying to get Lord Maccon sobered up so he can apologize to Alexia.

Every page is full of action and/or drama and it was an extremely fun book. If you’re looking for thought provoking highbrow literature, this is not that kind of book. This series was written during peak Twilight/supernatural romance popularity and it reflects that to some degree. Like I said, it’s a great junk food book!