I first read about this book in the Goodreads newsletter last November; I was reminded of it again in the spring by this post over on A Work in Progress, but it’s taken me until now to get around to actually reading it. Before starting, my impressions of things it had going for it were as follows: an alternate Victorian London, humor, the fact that it’s light reading. At the same time, I wasn’t sure I’d like it: it’s about vampires and werewolves (which I don’t tend to read about), and I tend to seek out my light reading in smart/well-written kids’ books or YA books, rather than in adult ones. But I figured I’d branch out from my usual non-mass-market-paperback reading material, and got this book and the next one in the series from the library.
So: we start at a ball, where our heroine, Alexia Tarabotti, has an unexpected encounter with a vampire in the library. This turns out to be worse for him than it is for her: she “had been born without a soul,” and “soullessness always neutralized supernatural abilities” (1-2). She kills the vampire with her hairpin and parasol, but then has to have a chat with the head of the local werewolf pack to explain what happened. This book’s set in a Victorian England where werewolves and vampires have been living openly, integrated into wider society, for several hundred years. They’re part of high society and government, and indeed, the queen has a Shadow Council through which they advise her. So far so good. And there are plenty of steampunk-ish details: dirigibles, curious goggles, a carriage with “a crank-operated water-boiling canteen for tea on the go, a long-distance monocular optical viewing device for the better appreciation of scenery, and even a small steam engine linked to a complex hydraulic system the purpose of which Alexia could not begin to fathom” (136-137).
I’ll admit that throughout the first chapter, I was tempted to put this book down and not pick it up again. It’s not that it’s entirely aimed at the lowest common denominator—I had to look up words like “catawampus” and “claviger”—but it’s mostly not very literary, particularly at the start. There are lots of short declarative sentences, the better to move the plot along, and as a result the writing seemed choppy to me. But OK, it’s a first novel, and setting the reader smoothly into a world that’s like ours but not quite isn’t necessarily easy.
And so I kept reading and resolved not to expect too much, and the plot did move along excitingly, as plots with danger and mysterious goings-on do, and then there were some delicious make-out scenes, and by the middle of the book I was quite happy to keep on reading in hopes of plot twists and/or more kissing. Maybe mostly more kissing. And there was enough kissing (and then some) to make me mostly willing to ignore the stereotypes (though I was annoyed when a gay male character was described as “wav[ing] a limp wrist about dismissively”) and the not-so-elegant writing (except for the repeated use of the phrase “comprised of,” which bugs me so much I can’t ignore it). This wasn’t great literature, but it was a reasonably fun quick read, and I’m curious/amused enough to give the next book in the series a try.
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