Blameless

Blameless by Gail Carriger

(Book 3: The Parasol Protectorate)

Published: September 1, 2010 by Orbit

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.

     So after the crazy cliffhanger that the 2nd book left off with I was definitely excited to continue the series. This book is just as absurd (maybe more so) and awesome as the previous books in the series and I'm looking forward to the 4th one. See my review of Changeless (2nd book) here.

Reasons I love this book:

• the cover- these covers continue to wow me and I love the colors on this one more than any of the others
• Alexia- I know, I've said this before, but she is one awesome heroine with an attitude and stubborn streak not to be taken lightly
• infant inconvenience- the very fact that this is how Alexia refers to her pregnancy makes me laugh
• action- there's a lot of action and more fight scenes than the previous books (yay!)

Huh, what?:

• Biffy- don't get me wrong, I love Biffy- I was simply shocked by what happened to him!
• the preceptor- he give me the creeps- being coldly polite, calling Alexia "My Soulless One"- doesn't that make your skin crawl a bit?
• resolving the cliffhanger- SPOILERS!- this takes way too long for my taste, although I was somewhat satisfied that it becomes less of an issue fairly early on

The boyfriend factor:

• my boyfriend tore through this one, mainly driven by his need for the cliffhanger to be resolved, and was a little disappointed when he realized he wouldn't have immediate access to the 4th book

Is this the end?:

• No, and I'm not liking the wait time until the 4th book releases on June 28 of this year, because to me that's a long wait

Favorite quotes:

• "Floote, what is going on? Do they think I am contagious? Should I assure them I was born with a nose this size?"                  -Alexia, pg. 207
• She reworked her assessment of her attackers: homicidal mechanical dripping ladybugs- ugh.      pg. 38

5 robots

The awesome Alexia returns with even more sass and more action!

Acquired: Bought