Review : Blameless by Gail Carriger
Blameless by Gail Carriger
Pages : 355
Genre : Paranormal, Steampunk, Historical Fiction, etc.
Series : The Parasol Protectorate, Book 3
My Rating : 3.5/5
About the Book :
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.
My Thoughts :
I was so excited going into Blameless after having such a wonderful time with Changeless. The previous story left us not exactly on a cliffhanger, but certainly with a lot of unresolved questions, and I was dying to find out what would happen next.
There’s a lot to like in this third book of the series, which also marks the middle of the story. I enjoyed seeing a tiny bit more of Alexia’s family’s dynamics, as well as meeting Ivy and Madame Lefoux again. I appreciate how Gail Carriger creates such varied, lively, complex and entertaining characters. They all stand out for different reasons, and despite all the craziness surrounding them, their personalities, even the craziest ones, don’t feel too far-fetched. They work within Alexia’s world and made me care for them all.
The story was also lots of fun, and most of all, I enjoyed knowing more about Alexia’s powers and the history of her kind. There’s a lot more to it than I had expected when starting with the series, which satisfies my constant curiosity. The traveling is a plus, and I love all the technology and steampunk aspects the author has been adding through the last 2 books (something I felt was really lacking in the first book).
But while I really enjoyed the book, two things tarnished my experience a little. The first is that I felt as though Blameless was very much a bridge between book 2 and 4, re-positioning the characters for the next step. The story felt a bit aimless at points, and the plot didn’t move as much as I would have liked. More importantly, I was very disappointed with how Alexia handled her husband in the end. It was too fast, too easy considering how bad things had been. Maybe I’ll get more of what I was hoping in the next book? Because despite my few disappointments in Blameless, I still very much enjoyed this adventure, and I look forward to completing the series.
Series :
- Soulless
- Changeless
- Blameless
- Heartless
- Timeless
