Timeless by Gail Carriger

A couple of years have passed in the Parasol Protectorate time stream between the last novel and this one, which has allowed the situation to develop a bit, and to reveal what some of Alexia and Connal's daughter, Prudence's, supernatural abilities are - she "steals" the attributes of other supernaturals, leaving them effectively mortal until sunrise or until her mother touches her, whichever comes first. This can make her quite a handful to deal with - imagine the terrible twos with the strength, speed and reflexes of a werewolf. For the most part, however, her adopted father, Lord Akeldama, and her two natural parents appear to be dealing with things successfully.

I have to note, here, that Lord Akeldama's terms of endearment continue to crack me up. A couple of examples were "my darling chamomile bud" and "my little periwinkle". And, for one of the werewolves, hes uses something like "my fuzzy darling."

An uproar begins when the beta of Maccon's old clan arrives in town after a journey to Egypt and is shot to death, passing while under the care of Floote, Alexia's butler. Coincidentally? Alexia is summoned to Alexandria by the eldest of vampires, Queen Matakara, for unknown reasons. To keep things amusing and interesting, Alexia and Connal are accompanied by Ivy Tunstell and her family and entire acting troupe, and Madame LeFoux, the mannish inventor.

There's lots of action in this book, some comedic, some serious. Perhaps vampires only behave in convoluted fashion by their nature, but it seemed to me that the trouble that Alexia and Connal experience in Egypt could have been avoided by Queen Matakara simply telling Alexia what she wanted from her as soon as she arrived, and making the necessary arrangements with her people ahead of time, rather than encouraging the chaos that took place.

Alexia and her friends learn a little bit more about the activities of her father, discover the nature and origins of the God Breaker Plague, and we learn a bit more about the pitfalls of immortality.

Heartless by Gail Carriger

Lady Alexia and Lord Maccon are moving in to Lord Akeldama's neighborhood. Their child is to be adopted by the vampire, which will cause the other vampires to give up their plan to assassinate the child.

They learn from a ghost of a plot to kill the Queen (I wondered at this point whether they meant of England or of the vampires). Alexia spends the rest of the novel waddling about in her state of advanced pregnancy, trying to find clues as to who is plotting the assassination, and how they plan to go about it.

In the midst of this, her sister shows up, claiming she has been thrown out of the house for associating with a women's suffrage organization, but it turns out she has more sneaky things on her mind. Biffy, the new werewolf in Lord Maccon's pack, is having a lot of trouble adjusting to his change, so Alexia tries to come up with some novel approaches to that problem, as well. She ends up recruiting her friend, Ivy, into her spur-of-the-moment spy organization, The Parasol Protectorate, when she needs someone to be her eyes and ears up with her husband's old pack in Scotland.

One of the truly amusing repeating bits in this novel is Lord Akeldama's ongoing terms of endearment, primarily used to refer to his friend, Alexia, but we also realize he never seems to call anyone by their actual name. One of my personal favorites was, "my little dipped biscuit". There's some good steampunk elements here when Madame LeFoux goes on a rampage in a mechanical flame-throwing octopus.

In fact, almost none of the novel deals with Alexia's baby directly, except for the very beginning and very end of the book. I suppose we'll get to find out more in the next book in the series.

Blameless by Gail Carriger

 Alexia is in a "delicate condition" in more ways than one. When her husband, Lord Maccon, the werewolf pack leader, finds out that she is pregnant, he blows a gasket. You see, supernaturals, being undead, are not able to sire children, so he believes she must have been unfaithful to him. Never mind that Alexia is simply not that sort of person, it's "impossible", so he throws her out of his house, and she flees back to London. When the society pages catch a whiff of the scandal, her own family gives her the cold shoulder, Queen Victoria (ever the moralist) dismisses her from her council, and the vampires of the city place a bounty on her head. The vampires have had experience in the long past with what is generally considered to be unprecedented, and the child of a preternatural, soulless one like Alexia, and a supernatural, is a dangerous being to them.

Lord Akeldama, being Alexia's friend, leaves her a cryptic warning before exiting town, in pursuit of one of his drones who has been kidnapped by another "rove" vampire. The only people behaving sensibly in the situation seem to be Floote, Alexia's butler (inherited from her father), Lord Maccon's beta Professor Lyall, and the cross-dressing inventor, Madame Lefoux. Floote and Lafoux accompany Alexia as she flees from the vampires of the city, to her father's homeland, Italy.

They have some interesting encounters along the way, with Lefoux's fellow members of the Order of the Octopus, and the Templars, who hope to study Alexia and use her as a weapon in their centuries-long war against the supernaturals. She learns a few new things about her heritage, the nature of the child she is bearing, and about herself, too.

Good entertainment, indeed.

Changeless by Gail Carriger

Lord and Lady Maccon have taken to married life like ducks to water, were one of the ducks a werewolf and the other a soul sucker. Unfortunately, a crisis is always at hand, and Lord Maccon is called away to deal with one which is having the dangerous effect of neutralizing supernaturals, in the same fashion as Alexia, but over a much larger area of London. To the werewolves and vampires this is mostly inconvenient, but results in permanent exorcism of the supernaturals of the ghostly persuasion, and Lord Maccon suddenly loses several of his spies because of it.

When his former pack, who now serve as the cadre one of the Queen's regiments in the Middle East, return from duty and then decamp for Scotland, Maccon is drawn after them, leaving Alexia behind. This doesn't stop her for long. She discovers that the anti-magic effect seems to be attached somehow to the Scottish pack, and ends up on a dirigible headed north, with the mysterious Madame LeFoux, her twitterpated friend Ivy, her sister and her maid Angelique in tow.

Alexia, in her stubborn way, blusters about the castle, discovering the source of the phenomenon and surviving attacks by mysterious entities. I found the ending, however, extraordinarily frustrating, which may be Carriger's intent, as its effect is like a horrible cliff hanger, and now I must soon read Blameless to find out what comes next.

Soulless by Gail Carriger

 I had a hard time pinning this novel down. It seemed a little bit like P.G. Wodehouse' humor, almost falls into the urban fantasy or paranormal romance genre, and had some elements of steampunk, too. I picked it up on special advertised on Facebook by the publisher, as I'd been thinking about trying Carriger's series for a while, and found it amusing.

Alexia Tarraboni is a "spinster" (not by today's standards) in Victorian England, the oldest daughter of a respectable family, with two younger and very vapid stepsisters. Alexia is quite well-read, and stubbornly intelligent, which may explain her lack of beaus, though it's often blamed on her mixed heritage, with a father who was Italian - her mother's first husband.

There are several sorts of supernaturals in residence in Carriger's London. The well known types are werewolves, vampires, and ghosts. Alexia herself is a lesser known type - a soulless one, or preternatural. Her main supernatural ability seems to be to remove the abilities of the other types, making them human when she touches them, though they revert immediately after she removes contact.

Alexia has a very contentious relationship with the alpha of the London pack of werewolves, Lord Maccon, a Scottish were who has recently arrived on the scene and challenged the old alpha successfully. It doesn't take long for us to figure out (if you read enough PNR) that the two will soon be romantically entangled, even if they're confused about their feelings through most of the book.

Alexia has a very efficient butler, much in the manner of Jeeves, without the gently sarcastic comments, while Lord Maccon's second in the pack seems to offer the biting comments, instead. She also has a flamingly gay vampire friend who provides her with good guidance and occasional immoral support.

Werewolves and vampires have begun disappearing from the streets, and newly made, ignorant vampires from no known line are showing up in their place, as well. Someone is messing with the natural order of things, and Alexia and her allies must get to the bottom of it somehow. It ain't Sherlock Holmes, but it's a pretty good start to the series. I'm hoping Carriger can continue to keep things light and humorous - even Wodehouse had his off days.