Soulless by Gail Carriger, narrated by Emily Gray

Rating

* * *

The book's description from the publisher's website:

Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

SOULLESS is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.

This book was fun. Pure entertainment to while away boring and/or dull hours we all have here and there.

I'll admit I have some mixed reactions to it and I was having a hard time deciding how to rate this novel. Some things just don't make sense. For example, Alexia's soullessness. It does give her that one supernatural (or rather, preternatural) power of taking away other supernaturals' powers by a single touch (sadly, no shape shifting or immortality involved) which is an interesting introduction to the paranormal genre. However, character-wise, Alexia couldn't be farther away from my idea of a soulless person (a psychopath comes to mind). I understand that to match the light and amusing tone of Soulless, Ms. Carriger couldn't make Alexia a completely evil woman, with no moral compass. But not a single, teeny tiny sinister trait? That's a little bit of a letdown. Sure, Ms. Tarabotti is stubborn, with an independent and untamed spirit, and with an alpha (of course, duh!!!) personality, but it is kind of mundane, if you ask me. For that alone, I wanted to give Soulless two stars.

On the other hand, I truly enjoyed the light tone of the whole story. I liked the humor, I liked Alexia's and Lord Maccon's 'dance' around admitting their feelings and desire for each other (don't worry, I'm not really spoiling anything, as it's obvious from the beginning where their relationship is going). I also had fun with other characters, especially with Ms. Tarabotti's mother and half-sisters. You put them all in one room and you truly have a comedy of manners. Consequently, I did chuckle a few times and smiled almost all the time, while listening to Soulless. And the writing itself wasn't half bad either. It had a kind of a spring-in-its-step quality. For these reasons, I was ready to bump the rating up to four.

In the end, after hoping that Alexia would suddenly do something deliciously evil and not getting it, I got stuck in the middle. I did like it enough to not consider it a waste of time but not enough, I'm afraid, to read the rest of Parasol Protectorate books (well, maybe if I find them during one of my frequent library sales excursions).

P.S.

The label attached to this book the most is 'steampunk'. Personally, I didn't notice many steampunk elements in Soulless. There was maybe one appearance of a dirigible delivering the queen of vampires' drone to Alexia. Not much that I can think of besides. Maybe because it's set in an alternate Victorian England? Definitely more fantasy than science-fiction, with werewolves and vampires taking the center stage.

Narration

I chose the audible version of Soulless and I'm glad of it. The narrator, Emily Gray, does a fantastic job conveying the sarcastic spark in Alexia and an overall humor of the story. She switches between characters and accents seamlessly. I never was confused as to which character was talking. Above all, Ms. Gray has a pleasant voice, breathes life into the novel and makes the listening experience worthwhile.

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FTC: I bought a copy of Soulless by Gail Carriger.

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

Rating

* * * * *

The book's description from the author's website:

East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night. Where shining hopes meet the darkest truths.

Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, a bright, defiant young woman dares to dream of a life beyond tumbledown wharves, gaslit alleys, and the grim and crumbling dwellings of the poor.

Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.

But Fiona's plans are shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man force her to flee London for New York. There, her indomitable spirit – and the ghosts of her past – propel her rise from a modest West Side shop front to the top of Manhattan's tea trade.

Fiona's old ghosts do not rest quietly, however, and to silence them, she must venture back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future.

This was such a great book! I was entranced by Fiona's story, her sheer will to survive despite everything bad that happened, and a lot happened, and especially by her and Joe's love for each other, the strength of their bond that just couldn't be broken. I was very happy that Ms. Donnelly didn't make a Mary Sue out of Fiona. Despite her great qualities, the fact that she managed to charm almost everyone who came in contact with her, Fiona had a little bit of a mean streak in her, which made her all the more realistic, considering that she grew up in a poor neighborhood, had to fend and fight tooth and nail for herself and her family. I would like to make a small reference here to Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. Even though I'm by no means comparing one to the other, Fiona was the Countess of Whitechapel, with her determination to get the revenge on people who ruined her life and the very soul of hers. 'There will be blood' is pretty much what kept popping up in my mind throughout the story. And I was cheering Fiona on all the way through. Out with 'turning the other cheek' and in with sharpening the claws and going for the jugular. We don't have enough of these kinds of characters, if you ask me.

There really isn't anything criticism that I can offer here. I simply loved every page of The Tea Rose. I loved the good people, even the ones who strayed and made mistakes, whom I thought I would hate; I hated the bad ones and wanted to see them punished almost as much as Fiona did. I'll tell you one thing, there were no 'in-betweeners'. It doesn't mean the characters were either black or white, most of them were gray like the November sky at one point or another, especially the decent ones. But in the end, what mattered was in their hearts, in their very nature and it was truly either good or bad to the bone.

I've seen it mentioned in a few other reviews that Ms. Donnelly wrote a soap opera. It was mostly meant as a criticism, but I'm on the side of readers like Misfit *nod*, who say that yes, The Tea Rose does read like a soap opera, but it's one of the best quality. Because there really isn't anything wrong with soap operas of the yesteryear that made this whole 'genre' of TV programs wildly successful, is there? Millions of people watch them to this day, whereas other shows come and go. Yes, some events in Fiona's life may seem far fetched but they're really not all that impossible. She had the guts, the determination and the brains. Most importantly, she had a dream that she would not let go of. I know there are and always have been women like her all over the world and throughout the history. I must also say, it's refreshing to read about a female character that makes me proud and glad we belong to the same species, in lieu of recent 'wimpy' and submissive girls who only live for a man (the one-hundred-times regurgitated Twilight and infamous Bella plus stacks and stacks of YA drivel with doe-eyed-i-can't-live-without-him silly little girls) or live for a man only and for his abusive ways and whose main goal in life is to be objectified by the very man they love (here's to you! Fifty Shades of Grey and your author counting her pounds and laughing).

Anyway, I might have gone on a little rant there but The Tea Rose really was refreshing to me and despite the tears I've shed (there will be many moments when your heart just breaks), I finished this book and closed it with a smile on my face and a contented sigh that not all is lost in the reading world yet.

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FTC: I bought The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly.