Review: The Parasol Protectorate, Gail Carriger
Soulless, Changeless, Blameless
Gail Carriger, Orbit Books
I have intermittent dreams of being a SERIOUS BUSINESS reviewer, the kind of person who can get away with talking about the puckish humor of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, in particular the song “Runaway” which features a literally “one-note” (what is the word) while Kanye satirically declares a “toast to the douchebags,” a clear commentary on the character of Kanye West as sketched by the media and West himself.
…unfortunately, I am not that guy. That’s probably why I ditched grad school, because I can’t deliver that sort of incisive review without meta-commenting on how I’m a pretentious bastard.
Anyway, the point of discussing this is explaining why my book review is of a steampunk urban fantasy book like Soulless instead of something rad, on my resolution list, and meaningful like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
But Soulless (and its sequels) are pretty rad. Seriously, as a girl who loves her genre fiction on the page and on the screen, it’s been a while since I’ve found a new bit of genre fiction that actually works for me. I think the last genre series I took seriously was Battlestar Galactica and well, my scathing intro to my own book will probably speak for itself on that clusterfrak. So, props to Gail Carriger on that tip.
Why does it work for me? Well, first, second, and last is the strength of the heroine. Alexia Tarabotti is a clever spin on your typical urban fantasy heroine: I really like the idea of a “preternatural” as the antagonist of the vampires and werewolves that roam through urban fantasy. It’s the smart resolution to the Superman problem of modern vampires: how do you handle nearly invincible characters who are smarter than regular humans without having them totally take over? The alt-history Carriger goes with, along with the concept of preternaturals, make Soulless’s universe work in terms of power balance, which I appreciated.
Back to why Alexia works: it’s not that steampunk is a new concept, but Carriger goes with it, complete with the bitchy English snobbery of the Victorian era. Of course Alexia is unusually strong-minded, something of an outsider, et cetera, but she’s not a heroine from 2010 in Victorian dress-up, which I also appreciate. Alexia is the strong-minded of a Jane Austen heroine, not Anita Blake in a corset.
[Sidenote: I do also have slight weakness for Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series. Not because it’s good, but because it’s SO awful. It’s proof that if you can sell it, you too can get your Anita Blake AU crackfic turned into another income stream (if you’re Laurell K. Hamilton)! I’m trying to imagine Merry Gentry vs. Alexia Tarabotti. Lulz abound, because I feel like Lord Maccon and Merry’s fairy guard would clash in Skittles-colored glory.]
The secondary characters aren’t quite as strong, though they are generically and generally entertaining. I suppose by having the love interest be a werewolf is different and instead of being pale and disinterested and angsty, you have loud and flustered and not-particularly-emo. But Carriger does a good job on the broad types. [Spoiler Alert: I will admit that the upcoming scenes where Queen Victoria and Lord Akeldama try to out-queen each other during Shadow Council meetings while Alexia watches are something to look forward to in book 4. Not because there’ll be a ton of scenes, probably, but because the one or two scenes where this happens will be funny as hell.] Lord Akeldama is probably the best of them. His main weakness is that we don’t get to see all the badass spy shit he’s doing with his army of gay boys.
As for the plot: pretty good. I tend to care less about plot itself and more about how well a narrative fits itself and its thematic promise. On that score, Carriger succeeds, so I don’t care if the books are full of wacky adventures and secondary characters having secondary adventures. They fit her world and they don’t like, completely negate the idea of Alexia and the romance between Alexia and her werewolf husband, et cetera.
Overall, this series felt like a peer of mine from my fandom days took all the best fandom tropes of genre fiction (a greater diversity of sexualities, heroines who can tread that line between realistic and Sue while being appealing, love interests who could beat the crap out of Spike and Edward Cullen), and had a ball doing an original fic. That doesn’t mean that’s TRUE, but I enjoyed the kicky, fannish-fun nature of the series while being able to read an urban fantasy series without cringing.
