Gail Carriger
Author of Soulless
About the Author
Gail Carriger is a New York Times Bestselling author. Her books are urbane fantasies mixed with steampunk. Her debut novel, Soulless, won the ALA's Alex Award and was nominated for the Compton Crook, Campbell, and Locus Awards. Changeless, Blameless, Heartless, Timeless, Soulless Vol. 1 (the show more manga), Soulless Vol. 2 (the manga of Changeless) were all New York Times Bestsellers. The first in her steampunk Finishing School series for young adults, Etiquette & Espionage, released Feb. 5 2013, was an instant NYT Bestseller. The second book in the Finishing School series, Curtsies & Conspiracies, released Nov. 5, 2013, and debuted at #5 on the NYT YA Bestseller list. In 2015 her title, Prudence, also made The New York Times High Profile Titles List. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Gail Carriger
The Curious Case of the Werewolf That Wasn't, the Mummy That Was, and the Cat in the Jar (2014) 251 copies
Delightfully Deadly 11 copies
Curtsies & Conspiracies [excerpt] 5 copies
Etiquette & Espionage [excerpt] 2 copies
Dear Lord Akeldama 1 copy
Associated Works
FenCon VIII — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Borregaard, Tofa
- Other names
- Borregaard, T.
Carriger, G.L. - Birthdate
- 1976-05-04
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Bolinas, Marin County, California, USA
- Places of residence
- California, USA
England, UK - Education
- University of California, Santa Cruz (M.A.) (Anthropology) (2008)
University of Nottingham (M.Sc.) (Archaeological Materials) (2000)
Oberlin College
Marin Academy - Occupations
- novelist
short-story writer
archaeologist - Organizations
- Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
- Short biography
- Ms. Carriger began writing in order to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. Ms. Carriger then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by a harem of Armenian lovers, where she insists on tea imported directly from London and cats that pee into toilets. She is fond of teeny tiny hats and tropical fruit. Soulless is her first book.
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Fantasy of manners (10)
Swashbucklers (1)
Read These Too (1)
Great Audiobooks (1)
Gaslamp Fantasy (1)
al.vick-series (1)
Favorite Series (1)
Ghosts (1)
Female Author (3)
United Kingdom (3)
io9 Book Club (1)
Comfort Reads (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 52
- Also by
- 10
- Members
- 28,171
- Popularity
- #717
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 2,012
- ISBNs
- 334
- Languages
- 12
- Favorited
- 95
Thoughts: I absolutely adore the Tinkered Starsong Trilogy and was incredibly excited to read another book set in that world. This ended up being okay but not nearly as well done or as fun as I expected. I think if I had read this before I read the Tinkered Starsong series I might have been more excited about it. That series set my expectations really high and additionally I didn't get the wonder about learning about this world since I already knew about it from that series.
This story follows Maura, a crudrat, who is getting too big for crud-ratting. Her and a friend start to dream up ways Maura might escape the Wheel. However, they are only dreams until Maura spots an alien getting led to prison and ends up involved in helping him escape.
This started out really slow and I really struggled to engage with Maura and the story. I was hoping that we would learn a lot more about the Wheel and Crudratting here and we do learn a bit more but it just wasn't built out as much as I had hoped. For the first 50% of this book I struggled to stay engaged, I kept putting the book down to find other things to do. There were also a lot of typos in the first parts of the book; misspellings, faulty punctuation...really basic stuff. I really wanted to love this though, so I stuck with it.
The second half of the book was a lot better. Maura gets to experience a new planet and see new species of aliens. I really enjoyed this a lot and thought Maura really came into her own as the story progressed. I loved that she knew her strengths and was happy to live up to those strengths rather than try to meet other people's expectations of her. I also loved that we saw other parts of cultures and aliens that were also talked about in the Tinkered Starsong series, this built out some of the races better for me. I did think things ended very unfinished feeling and would love to see a book that builds out more of Maura's story.
So, I am a bit torn on this one. I really loved the second half of the book but thought the first half was slow and awkward. This book really needs some better editing, luckily I borrowed this from the library and didn't purchase it, so I don't own this poorly edited book. Hopefully they will push out an updated, edited version at some point.
My Summary (3.5/5): Overall I am glad I read this but really struggled with both the beginning of the book and the poor editing. I oscillated between 3 and 4 stars, so ultimately decided on 3.5 stars. The real question is whether or not I will read "The 5th Gender". I am a bit reluctant too because of how poorly edited this book was, but I do love this world and would like to read stories set in it.. I would definitely recommend reading The Tinkered Starsong series over this series. This book does give some additional background on The Wheel, but I am not sure if it was enough background to enhance my enjoyment of The Tinkered Starsong series.… (more)