Publisher: Orbit (2010)
Started: April 29th, 2014
Finished: July 29th, 2014
Rating: 5/5 Stars
Quitting her husband's house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon is 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.
Well, it's time to sit down and review this bad boy, er... girl in this case. Of course, I decide to start a book blog in the middle of a series I'm reading, so I apologize that this is not the first novel, hehe. At any rate, every book I've read so far in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series has been absolutely fantastic and the third book didn't disappoint. Compared to the previous novel, Changeless, it had quite a bit of action in it. From Alexia being chased by mechanical ladybugs to vampires and quite a lot in between, the pace of the novel was certainly fast in that regard and I enjoyed it. Considering the pace of the novel's predecessor, it was different since Changeless had a tendency to drag a bit in places. Blameless, however, had a good balance of action and "quiet" scenes as I like to call them. Speaking of quiet scenes...
Going into the novel I was concerned that this would be the book where Alexia wallows and throws a pity party for herself and that would be the majority of the content of Blameless. I was delightfully surprised and relieved to discover that wasn't going to be the case because I'd be really, really upset if that had happened. Alexia is not the type of woman to wallow and pine after a man that's rejected her. She's a lady of action, getting things done, and being sensible about things and that is honestly the main reason I love this character so much. Alexia Maccon is an independent woman for her time but she also works within the etiquette and acceptable behavior of the time period (to a point). For example, there is a scene in the novel where Alexia and her companions need to make a quick getaway in a flying machine. The seating arrangements are less than desirable and her skivvies end up exposed, but given the situation, Alexia's common sense allows her to soak up the faux pas in exchange for being able to live a while longer. She'd rather deal with the embarrassment and keep her life versus taking extra time to fix her skirts. Had one of her step-sisters been with her at the time, the results of their getaway might've been entirely different!
Carriger continues to reveal information of Alexia's kind beautifully. There isn't too much or too little information being revealed about Preternaturals--it's just enough to keep you wanting to read more and get the next book to see what happens! Although, at first I didn't really like the tease I got as a reader regarding the extremist group from the first novel. However, after sitting back and thinking, Blameless is really an exploration of Alexia and her kind and not necessarily a focus on the nefarious underplot of what possibly awaits all supernaturals in the universe of the Parasol Protectorate. In all, if you like Urban Fantasy with bite (pun might be marginally intended), Steampunk, or Historical Fantasy set novels, you'll really enjoy Blameless and this particular series written by Carriger.
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