The Parasol Protectorate: Books 1-3

This is better in omnibus form, because the first book is pretty bad. Assuming you came to the series hoping for competent light adventure, the payoff is in the later volumes. Soulless comes across as if it were written by a bright high schooler in love with doing a mashup of Twilight, steampunk, Austen, Pratchett, and all those modern R and X rated fantasy romance novels. This is the kind of writing that gives fan fiction a bad name. The attempt at cute Victorian dialogue in chapter one chased me away for a week. Things weren't much better as the two main protagonists argued, flirted and lusted for each other in later chapters. But there was one early short chapter setting up the actual plot, where, not coincidentally, neither of the show more main characters appeared, that was much better done, and similar chapters appeared again at later points. Clearly Carriger can write a light adventure, when she isn't trying to force specific scenes and events. In the second and third books, Changeless, and Blameless avoid most of the worst elements of Soulless, and the tale flows reasonably smoothly in both cases. The sappy wish-fulfillment romance scenes are less frequent because the plots keep the two characters apart most of the time.

So, if you're a fan of light fantasy adventure, I'd recommend giving these a shot, and don't judge the series by its first entry. show less

The 'steampunk' part of this series is very small. Instead it is a light-hearted, romantic adventure with werewolves and vampires cast in a different light from what I expected. I read all five books, straight through and quite enjoyed it.

I don't think that I expect less of the books that I read, but I am willing to accept a book as just light escapism, and this fit the bill totally.

Soulless: Funny. Fast-paced and not my cup of tea. Still, it was worth the read...even if I did continually call Alexia "teletubby." 3 stars