Blameless by Gail Carriger

This is the 3rd book in the Parasol Protectorate series...I've blogged before about the first two books in the series, Soulless and Changeless (http://bit.ly/l9dHiC). While the book was really fun to read, it definitely fell to the bottom when compared to the other two books in the series. More on that later...

Quick summary: 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.

This book had everything that I enjoyed in the previous two books: fun characters, engaging story, it's a quick easy read, and lots of witty banter. And surprisingly I appreciated that this wasn't a very romance-heavy book. (Probably because Alexia and Connall were not together for 95% of the book.) Also, it was nice to learn more about the history of supernaturals and how they came about. Specifically, it was interesting to get background on preternaturals and how a soulless lady like Alexia operates.

Professor Lyall (Conall's second in charge) really came into his own in this book. We spent a lot more time with him in this book and he's such a well-written character that it's fun being able to visualize him throughout the book. He has such a prissy, dignified manner about him that is really entertaining. At first I thought that our resident gay vampire, Lord Akeldama, would be my favorite character - but after reading this book, Randolph Lyall has taken his place.


Something that really drove me crazy about the book is how quickly Alexia forgave Connall for kicking her out of the house. If my husband had accused me of getting pregnant by another man, kicked me out and essentially made me the talk of the town - he would have to grovel a lot more than Alexia made him do. (I noticed in other reviews that this was a consistent complaint for this book.) Since Alexia is such a strong female character, I really expected her to bust Connall's chops a little more. Maybe in the next book there will be a little more conflict between the two around this subject...I just find it hard to believe that you can just forgive someone that quickly for such a transgression.


Overall, it was another fun read that I 100% recommend.


Rank: B