(Spoiler alert: it’s hard to talk about this book without mentioning some key plot points both from this book and the previous one, Changeless. So if you haven’t read this series and want to be surprised if/when you do, you might want to stop reading now.)
At the start of this book, Alexia Maccon, newly estranged from her husband, has been unhappily staying at her mother and step-father’s house for a week or two. Alexia and her half-sisters don’t get along very well: she’s smart and they’re shallow, or, as Carriger puts it, “Alexia was known throughout London for her intellectual prowess, patronage of the scientific community, and biting wit. Felicity and Evylin were known for their puffed sleeves” (6). Poor Alexia: horrible half-siblings, a stubborn Scottish werewolf husband who thinks she’s cheated on him, and morning sickness: can things get any worse? As it turns out, yes. Alexia is dismissed from her position on the Queen’s Shadow Council, and realizes that she’s quite vulnerable without her husband’s protection. On the bright side, there’s her gay vampire best friend, Lord Akeldama, who is fond of gossip, prone to Liberace-ish dressing, and not scared of a little scandal: he’ll surely let her stay with him… except that when Alexia arrives at Akeldama’s house, it seems quite empty, and looks like it’s been vacated in a hurry. And someone, it turns out, is trying to kill Alexia.
Meanwhile, Lord Maccon is drinking himself silly at Woolsey Castle, and Professor Lyall is doing his best to keep the Woolsey pack/household under control. The best course of action for everyone seems to be for Alexia to get herself out of London, so she sets off for Italy by way of Paris, with Floote (loyal servant) and the excellent Madame Lefoux (the inventor who dresses in men’s clothing and enjoys flirting with Alexia) along for company and protection.
As with the previous two books in the series, there’s humor and suspense in this one, as Alexia tries to shake her enemies and learn more about how she could possibly have become pregnant (it’s commonly thought that vampires and werewolves, being mostly dead, aren’t able to father children in the usual way). And I was pleased to find that, as in Changeless, the writing is more solid than it was in Carriger’s first book. The story is sometimes ridiculous—I’m not sure how I feel about reading a book that features the “mysterious Templars,” as the back cover puts it, as a plot point—but after the two previous books I was fond enough of Alexia and the other main characters not to be too bothered. As fun/light reading, I’ve been enjoying this series, though I’m not sure if I’ll bother/remember to pick up the next book when it comes out in July 2011.
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