I know everyone's on right now about Katniss and the HUNGER GAMES movie (which I have not yet seen so have been ducking out of much of the online chatter in order to avoid spoilers; the eye-rolling reports around Rue's being African American--and this surprises people?--being one of those things that I'd very much like to avoid), but I am enraptured in another kind of heroine whose story is not so much beginning as ending.
Sort of, anyway.
To say that I've been a fan of the Parasol Protectorate would be an understatement. Gail Carriger managed to create a unique world that combined all the best smatterings of steampunk, history, fashion, humor, romance, paranormal fiction and wrap it all up in a neat epic journey of one preternatural amidst the English ton. I've delighted in the odd heresy of Alexia Tarrabotti's mere existence in the wake of her imagined London alongside such werewolves as BUR head, Lord Conall Maccon and his Beta, Professor Lyall, vampires like Countess Nadasny and the incomparable Lord Akeldama, and odd sorts of friends such as cross-dressing French inventor Genvieve Lafoux and silly-hatted Ivy Hisselpenny (not to mention the odd sorts of enemies like The Society of the Brass Octopus or the Knights Templar)!
Now the first series ends with this book, which I have been waiting for with delight and dread, because no one really wants to say goodbye to their friends, even when we know we can always come back again. Yet I know there is another series "abroad" due out soon so I'll comfort myself with this final(-sh) chapter, a plate of ginger biscuits, and a sweet cup of tea.
By the way, if you don't know what I'm on about, go pick up the first book, SOULLESS, and start reading!
