Alexia is in danger and outside the protection of her pack (you'll have to read Changeless (The Parasol Protectorate)
to find out why). With her husband in a drunken stupor, and her vampire confidant, Lord Akeldama, gone without a trace, Alexia needs to find her own answers. With Madame Lefoux, the inventor, and Floote, the butler, Alexia sets off for Italy in search of solutions for her current dilemma and information about her father.
I love Alexia's bluntness and her no-nonsense approach to most things. She has an excellent sens of humor. I also love the character of Professor Lyall who was developed nicely in this book. He is solid and dependable, with a dry humor, and he embraces is role in the pack and executes it well.
Great series. I was pleased to note that there will be another book in the series, Heartless, sometime next summer.
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[A sequel to Soulless]
Everyone is suspicious of Alexia when all the supernaturals in London lose their supernatural-ness. But one preternatural couldn't possibly affect an entire city, could she?
Alexia, and an inventor named Madame Lefoux, head off with an entourage to Scotland to look for answers to the "changeless" problem. Unfortunately, some supernaturals seem so certain Alexia is the problem, they want to see her dead. [A revelation at the end sheds more light on why some want Alexia dead.]
This is a hard book to talk about without giving away too much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Alexia is still a delightful character - frank, inquisitive, and bold. The supernatural set she interacts with on a regular basis are distinct and delightful to spend time with. Carriger does a great job building her world and doling out information to the reader without just "dumping" it.
Next week I'll review the third book in the series.
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Marcy Singer is the owner of a new needlework shop called The Seven Year Stitch. She's so excited to start a new life in a new town, doing something she has dreamed about for years. And everything would be great if it weren't for the dead man in her storage room!
As if that dead man wasn't bad enough, soon another one is dead and both had connections to Marcy's shop and a shady land development group. If Marcy wants to build her business, enjoy some new relationships, and make a place for herself in the community, she is going to have to figure out who killed these men before she's next.
Great mystery! I was so happy to find a new needlework-themed series. I have read another one, but the last book sounded a little too dark for my preferences so I skipped it entirely. This cozy was perfect. Plenty of characters to keep you guessing, but not too many that you couldn't keep them straight. In a perfect world, I would have liked it if a couple of the characters had different names - two women with R names and the two suitors with T names got confusing at times. But the characters were different enough that I was quickly able to orient myself to who was doing the talking. And I enjoyed the characters. The tension between Marcy and her "best-friend" was a little surprising for so early in the series, but it made sense in the context of small town dynamics.
Can't wait for the next book in the series - Stitch Me Deadly: An Embroidery Mystery
- due out on February 1, 2011.
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I recently skimmed through these two books from the library. The bread book sounded fantastic, but a little more involved than I care to be right now in my bread-eating life. Maybe when life slows down again - like next summer - I might give a loaf a try.
The Typo Hunt was a fun premise - some friends head around the country fixing grammatical and spelling errors on signs. They even performed their editing service at the Grand Canyon, much to the government's chagrin. My favorite part was when the author highlighted the errors in the government's documentation of the charges against them!
[I am an Amazon Associate. If you link to Amazon from one of my blogs and purchase something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.]
