55 Books in a Year: Book #33 Changeless

So, after I read Soulless I spent a lot of time on Gail Carriger's website/bloggie thing. It's a pretty awesome site, but it's even cooler after you've read her book and gotten into the minds of her characters...she's pretty adorable. There's a daily dose (your moment of parasol, your infusion of cute, your tisane of smart, and your writerly tinctures) and she's so clever all of the time.

This book isn't really much different than the first. There are some adorable times with Lord and Lady Maccon (why buy nightgowns, really?), there's a scene where Lord Maccon is naked in the middle of London...that was fun to imagine *cough, cough*, Ivy's love life also heats up which is pretty fun to read about, there's a fight on a dirigible (who's reasons and answers aren't totally fleshed out by the end of the book, I believe on purpose!), and there's a mummy full of mystical wonder. Alexia's sister is also along for the ride, I'm still not really sure why she's in the book as there are enough characters to keep track of without her whining and complaining and flirting and fainting. There are some new gadgets like the aether transmitter and the book takes place mostly in Scotland.

You know actually when I think about it, this story much like the story from the first book is full of mystery and kept me on my toes throughout. It's the characters that didn't really do it for me. Like I mentioned there's Alexia's sister (I can't even remember her name), Ivy is especially annoying and faints too and often, and then there's this character a tall French lady, Madame Lefoux, who Alexia thinks may be a spy (this woman has some sort of crush on Alexia that I just found distracting and unnecessary), Angelique shows her true colors, and Lord Maccon's wolf and human (yes, human) descendants are a bit stubborn and don't understand why he is so angry with them.

So, storywise, Book Two in the Parasol Protectorate series is just as good as the first. It's the characters that make it a little less than the first. It isn't until the end that this truly comes into fruition. Since I don't have to wait until the third book, I know everything turns out all right in the end I'm not too worried about it...I'm pretty sure that if I'd read the book when it first came out I'd have been as tee'd off as heck. This is one of the majors reasons that I wait until a series is finished before digging in.


If you can manage to not get annoyed by Felicity-wait! that's the sister's name--or ticked off at Lord Maccon, Ivy or the French Spy you are in for a wild and fun ride through the moors of Scotland. I won't be picking up the third book until after the Summer...I've read the blog and know what's going on...I'm willing to wait. And, yeah, this review seems a little disjointed because I don't know where I stand on this book...let's just end with I love it, go read it...and, if you can't wait you'd better have that third book ready!