Tag Archives: Gail Carriger

Review of Prudence (The Custard Protocol #1), by Gail Carriger

I borrowed an audio copy of Gail Carriger‘s Prudence through my local library. And if you want pressure to finish a book, try borrowing an audiobook through Overdrive, having and hour and ten minutes left of it and noticing the book will be auto-returned in one hour. Luckily, the automation doesn’t appear to be too exact. I managed to finish it.

Description from Goodreads:
When Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama (Rue to her friends) is given an unexpected dirigible, she does what any sensible female would under similar circumstances – names it the Spotted Crumpet and floats to India in pursuit of the perfect cup of tea. But India has more than just tea on offer. Rue stumbles upon a plot involving local dissidents, a kidnapped brigadier’s wife, and some awfully familiar Scottish werewolves. Faced with a dire crisis and an embarrassing lack of bloomers, what else is a young lady of good breeding to do but turn metanatural and find out everyone’s secrets, even thousand-year-old fuzzy ones?

Review:
Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate is one of my favorite series and I looked forward to visiting old friends in Custard Protocol. And I enjoyed that aspect of it a lot, along with Carriger’s signature humor and patent ridiculousness. However, without her mother’s gravitas, I found Rue’s similar eye to fashion and tea times frivolous and just this side of annoying. I liked her no where near as much as Alexia. But this is also much more of a YA title than Soulless (not that that’s overly adult), so this could account for some of my disappointment. All in all, light and amusing, but not a home run. Though Moira Quirk did a marvelous job of the narration.

 

 

Book Review of Poison or Protect (Delightfully Deadly, #1), by Gail Carriger

I received an Audible code through AudioBookBoom for a copy of Poison or Protect, by Gail Carriger.

Description from Goodreads:
Can one gentle Highland soldier woo Victorian London’s most scandalous lady assassin, or will they both be destroyed in the attempt? 

New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger presents a stand-alone romance novella set in her popular steampunk universe full of manners, spies, and dainty sandwiches. 

Lady Preshea Villentia, the Mourning Star, has four dead husbands and a nasty reputation. Fortunately, she looks fabulous in black. What society doesn’t know is that all her husbands were marked for death by Preshea’s employer. And Preshea has one final assignment. 

It was supposed to be easy, a house party with minimal bloodshed. Preshea hadn’t anticipated Captain Gavin Ruthven – massive, Scottish, quietly irresistible, and… working for the enemy. In a battle of wits, Preshea may risk her own heart – a terrifying prospect, as she never knew she had one. 

Buy Poison or Protect today to find out whether it’s heartbreak or haggis at this high tea. 

Review:
The dedication to this book is “For everyone one of my fans who reached out and said, “If Gail Carriger writes it, I will read it….”” Well, I’ve not reached out, but I find I have become one of those fans. Poison or Protect is a novella set in the same world as the Finishing SchoolParasol Protectorate, and Custard Protocol series. You see one or two familiar faces, but it stands separate from each; perhaps only tentatively alone, as you still need to know some of the world details—what a drone is, why vampires are so geographically limited, werewolf hierarchies—but it isn’t actually part of any of Carriger’s bigger series.

I adored both Preshea and Gavin. Both were characters I wanted to gather to me. Their dynamic is one that just pushes all my buttons. I won’t include a spoiler, but just say I found them very sexy. And the book is more sexually explicit that I’ve seen in the bigger series. Not overly so at all, but this is not a YA book.

The writing is tight and gloriously proper, as always, and Lavington did an amazing job narrating it. All in all, a winner for me.

the parasol protectorate banner

Book Review: The Parasol Protectorate (#1-3), by Gail Carriger

This post isn’t quite a normal book review post in the sense that I put reviews (if only short ones) for The Parasol Protectorate books on Goodreads. However, despite being a series I very much enjoyed and leading me to read several more of Gail Carriger’s books, I can’t see that I ever posted them here on the blog. I’m baffled. So, I’m bringing the reviews from Goodreads to the blog to patch the hole. (I’m approximating dates too.) This is a compilation of the first three books (not the only copy of them I own); I’ve, in fact, read all five.

the parasol protectorate

Book 1: SOULLESS
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire — and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

Review:

Except for some annoying head hopping, I found this an amusing read of the totally ridiculous type.


Book 2: CHANGELESS
Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the mid-afternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears – leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.

But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest fashions, and an arsenal of biting civility. Even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can.

She might even find time to track down her wayward husband, if she feels like it.

Review:

Still enjoyed the book—Alexia, her batty friends/family, the steampunkness, the narrative tone, etc. However, what I most enjoyed about Soulless was the byplay of Alexia and Conall and you just get so very little of that here. I missed it a lot.


Book 3: BLAMELESS
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.

Review:

Conall: “So, yeah, like despite doing nothing wrong, sorry, I immediately distrusted you, called you horrible names, disparaged your character, rejected you, threw you out of your home such that you were then turned away by your family, shunned by society, dismissed from your position, insulted, emotionally devastated, captured, experimented on, narrowly avoided vivisection and had to fight off numerous attempts at assassination. Tee-hee, my bad. But I’ve forgiven you now. So, hurry up and get naked so we can have some of that ‘bed sport’ you know I love so much.”
“Alexia: “Sure, ok.”

Really Carriger, this is what you offer us? No, thank you.

I still enjoyed Alexia, her friends (Floote & Lyall were the primary redemptive qualities of the whole book), and the sarcastic humour of the series, but Conall has proven himself to be such an ass I may not even continue with the series. And I do not at all feel that he in any way made up for the harm he caused (let alone the potentially fatal position he placed the woman he is supposed to love in).

Nope.

the parasol protectorate photo