Two Parasol's Kick Arse

Changeless


Written by: Gail Carriger

Released: March 30, 2010 by Orbit

Summary: 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.



Oh Alexia, though I love you dearly you are so dense sometimes and I would gladly try and steal away your husband if I thought that I had a chance. What else can I really say but that?

I love these books and with each passing one I am getting more connected and invested in the characters. Plus I just love how it’s so unusual a combination for a book and with such amazing storylines it’s hard to put these suckers down even for a minute.

This book was fantastic. I loved with bits with the high-tech instruments, like the Victorian version of a cell-phone (or would it be more like e-mail... definitely e-mail) and the dirigibles with their squeak decks. But the romance is so classically understated while still being fully front and center that it makes me both laugh and sigh.

I’m going to admit that since I bought the third book before reading this, the second, I knew the major surprise at the ending, but still, I think that from the blatant foreshadowing that there was throughout the entirety of the novel, I would have guessed it way before it was revealed. But we’ll never know now for sure.

There were a few characters introduced in this book and I think that they’ll make a great addition to the main cast. Madame Fouf is a character who will add to the envelope pushing (of Victorian times) with this book and I can’t wait to read about her more in the upcoming novels. Plus, if she can make parasols that shoot darts, I completely want one – for fashionable purposes only, of course.

While I can’t wait to read more of these books, it looks like I’m going to have to wait for quite a while (which means that I’ve read the third already; before I wrote up this review) since the fourth book isn’t coming out for several months. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on an ARC...

Still, when you’re an avid reader you also have to be a patient person. If I really wanted a fix I could potentially scour the internet for fan-fictions about Alexia and her delicious werewolf husband, but I’m afraid that they would never life up to the original, so I’m not even going to try. So, for now, I’m just going to rate this as a 9/10 and leave it at that.